Musicianship at the Core of Eastern Sound Stories
Eastern Sound Stories has won Outstanding Music Journalism
Reporter
Eastern Sound Stories highlights musicians of Asian heritage in Aotearoa. A podcast produced by Eastern Sound Collective presented by Namnita Kumar.
Last month, the podcast won Taite Music Prize - NZ On Air Outstanding Music Journalism.
Namnita Kumar (left) and Nadia Freeman (right) celebrate their win. Image supplied.
The seven part-series showcases some of Aotearoa’s best songs from musicians of Asian descent with a focus that isn’t on their ethnicity, but on the music.
Executive producer Nadia Freeman - aka Miss Leading - says as a performer herself, one of the challenging aspects of creating work is the expectation that it has to involve her ethnicity.
“Quite often it isn't the case and sometimes it feels like I need to justify that,” she says of what has become the basis for the podcast.
Through the podcast, Freeman says identity and culture organically emerges through the conversation but is never the core of the discussion.
“We wanted the podcast to be focused on a topic that was relevant to their musicianship, which is why we ended up asking about the story behind a song or track,” Freeman says.
Eastern Sound Stories includes musicians Alisa Xayalith, Ashy, Umar Zakaria, Nikita Tu Bryant (Kita), and more.
The scope of the series involved considerations around a balance of gender, music genres, and cultural representation, and Freeman describes the end result as “a wonderful palette of New Zealand music storytelling with first-hand experiences of jazz composers, Hip Hop MCs’ and pop musicians, all with very different experiences in the music industry.
Pairing up with Wellington’s RadioActive FM through its podcast submissions process allowed the podcast to reach an audience, including assistance with marketing and promotion.
“We were over the moon when ours was accepted, as one of the biggest challenges to launching a new podcast is building an audience,” Freeman says.
Production for Eastern Sounds Stories took approximately seven months from start to finish and was conceived by editor and sound designer, Kanan Saba.
'"This podcast to me was an important opportunity to present the range and depth of music being created by Asian artists in Aotearoa today, and a valuable time capsule to reflect on in the future," Saba says.
The production of the series has been described as “a cross continental effort” where the team were working across different time zones, including in the UK, Toronto, and LA.
Eastern Sound Collective won a $2500 dollar cash prize, thanks to NZ On Air.
Listen to the episodes above or head to the full series.
Eastern Sounds Stories Production team:
Executive Producer: Nadia Freeman
Technical Producer: Karnan Saba
Presenter and Artist Liaison: Namnita Kumar
