FEATURE | INTERVIEWS | CULTURE
Written by Liam Hansen (they/them) @liamhanse.n | Editor-in-Chief & Geneva AM
Tangaroa, atua o te moana, is present across pūrakau (Māori folklore/legends) as one of the many children of Papatūānu-ku and Ranginui, the sky father and earth mother (although details vary between different iwi). He is the god of the ocean and all sealife, and remains important today - from the longstanding fishing culture present across Aotearoa, to the trips across choppy oceans to reach Waiheke Island.
This is where Geneva AM’s newest release, ‘T(M)²I’ (pro-nounced ‘Tangaroa Made Me Ill'), originates. Songwriter and producer Geneva Alexander-Marsters (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairoa) tells stories of times early in her relationship, travelling to her partner across Tīkapa Moana/the Hauraki Gulf and feeling the hectic ocean beneath her reflect the whirlwind emotions of a new relationship.
‘T(M)²I’ is the second release of Geneva’s current solo project, after having spent six years in the trip-hop group SoccerPractise. Her first release, ‘IHO’, netted her a Stu-dent Radio Network Award for Te Tohu Puoro o te reo Māori (Favourite Song featuring te reo Māori), and ‘T(M)²I’ continues on that; the track has its primary version in te reo Māori, alongside a b-side iteration in te reo Pākehā (NZ English). Fresh off of the song’s release, I had a kōrero with Geneva about the origins of the waiata, why she created two versions, the music video, and more.
Liam:
Okay, so! Where did this song originate?
Geneva AM:
It started from the early days of me seeing my current partner, and commuting out to see him on Waiheke Island in the winter we got together. I'm not a boat person at the best of times, but there was one particular storm that even the locals thought was rough. Tangaroa, the sea god, can make the oceans convulse in such a violent way - you can start to just feel so small and insignificant. I started making the beat on my computer as a way to manage my anxiety at that moment, both from the storm and that initial stage of the relationship. I think the beat itself stemmed from a sort of Dracula theme, which you can hear the melody of in the outro.
Liam:
How about the lyrics?
Geneva AM:
Eh, it’s a bit cheesy - I was basically writing secret love po-ems for Mike, my partner, whenever he was out of the room. The poetry and the lyrics came together really well: when I eventually showed it to him, he was really flattered and encouraged me to release music again. I hadn't released anything in a long time, though, so I marinated on it as my life continued - we moved in together, had a baby, and eventually I wrote and released ‘IHO’. ‘T(M)²I’ is almost like a prelude to that song.
Liam:
You mentioned how this is your return to music, after being a part of the group SoccerPractise. How has creating music as a solo artist differed from that set up?
Geneva AM:
Well, in a way I'm just continuing on what I learned from that band. We wrote a lot of songs about these negative aspects in our lives - anxiety, the housing crisis, et cetera - and I think I just wanted to start writing positive music as a type of manifestation. I think with everything that’s going on in the world right now, it's good to provide people with a sense of hope, or even just comfort. I thought ‘T(M)²I’ in particular would be good for people who may feel like they're undeserving of love, and wouldn’t experience true love again. It was written as I was coming out of a couple covid breakups, which are particularly gnarly. Everything came from a real strong vibe of “the world's ending, and I need to just focus on myself.”
Liam:
I mean, there’s so many parallels present in this song and its creation - the rocky seas you made it on, against the anxiety of the early relationship, for example. I feel like that’s also present in interpolating a Dracula-esque theme in such a chill beat - was that on purpose?
Geneva AM:
I mean, interpolation comes naturally to me - I was doing a lot of covers at weddings and stuff for 15, 20 years, which gave me so much time to learn how these classic songs came together and worked. I tried to emulate them in my own music - and here I was kind of copying the Dracula theme. However, it totally changed with the beat.
Liam:
It’s like a massive metaphor for that anxiety.
Geneva AM:
Yeah - you can have this tumultuous feeling inside of you, but on the surface, you're completely calm and operational. That’s turned up tenfold when you fall in love with someone: you're doing everything possible to not deter them from you, caring about every detail down to breathing differently around them. You just try your best to like, not outwardly show that you're crazy, but you kind of are - you're crazy about them.
Liam:
Continuing on the point of parallels, ‘T(M)²I’ has versions in both te reo and English. Why did you want both versions to be out in the world?
Geneva AM:
Part of being bilingual is that you've got a foot in both worlds at all times. You're always thinking in both worlds, or interpreting things in both worlds. Initially, I did write this song in English - but when I was working on ‘IHO’, I had the opportunity to get in touch with a mātanga reo named Dr Tātare. I approached him about also translating this waiata for me in Māori - I had written my own translation, but I wanted to make sure it was correct. But because the song talks about the natural world, light, emotions -te reo Māori has many words for those concepts. The words that I had chosen in my translation contextually didn't make as much sense as what Dr Tātare suggested. That really made the song change for me, made it more real as it went through someone else and came back to me and this other form.
Liam:
Let’s talk about the music video for ‘T(M)²I’ you put together with Eddy Fifield. Part of this was shot while you were travelling in Japan, and it was partially inspired by Aftersun - which is funny, because in our office…
I adjust my laptop screen to show Geneva the massive Aftersun poster we have in the Debate office. She was very excited by this.
How did this film inspire the music video?
Geneva AM:
It was all through chance. We were visiting Japan, together as a family and to visit our friends - one of whom, Kingi being a photographer. At the back of my mind, I knew that I wanted to release this track, so I was kind of thinking of
a way to make something in Japan, but I wasn't sure yet. Once we were on the plane over, and had gotten our baby to sleep, me and Mike realised this was our first moment in hours we were able to relax together after the stress of travelling. We both just pressed play at the same time and watched Aftersun together, as a plane date. I drew upon the found footage technique in the film to stimulate nostalgia, and I figured since we're about to make all of these memories together, we may as well try to film a bunch of stuff in Japan. Kingi had a Nikon Coolpix camera, I had an SD card in my wallet that fitted perfectly into it, and we were ready to go. We shot all this footage together, going into these different art museums, staying over on this island - it was just a really incredible trip in itself. To be able to, and then to immortalise it into this love song, and the music video was just such a perfect way to look back on that time of our lives.
You can stream ‘T(M)²I’ on all good streaming platforms, watch the music video on YouTube, and keep up to date with Geneva's upcoming work at @geneva_am. I asked her if she had any final notes for the interview, and she said "Free Palestine".
