Music News - Long White Cloud launching to rally Kiwis
02 December 2015 - 0 Comments
Kiwi pop/rock royalty has joined with international award winning multimedia Attitude Group to produce music track with a lofty social goal.
Long White Cloud talks of Kiwi pride and unity. It’s been produced to drive public awareness of the 25% of New Zealand’s population who live with some form of disability.
The song will be launched tomorrow at the 2015 Attitude Awards, a black tie event to celebrate UN sanctioned ‘International Day of People with Disability’ and acknowledge people with disabilities.
Robyn Scott-Vincent, Attitude’s founder and CEO, says the idea grew after she met Mike Chunn, a founding member of the world renowned band Split Enz, and told him she thought Kiwis with disabilities would appreciate an anthem.
“I thought it would be good to rally the nation ahead of the Rio 2016 Paralympics and to have something to make people stop and think for two minutes about the one million Kiwis who live with a disability and rise above their challenges,” Scott-Vincent says.
Chunn had the perfect song - Long White Cloud – and that it needed to be part of a significant celebration.
“I sent Robyn a demo of a song written by my old school friend Paul Fitzgerald,” Chunn says. “Long White Cloud personifies New Zealand, the nation and its people. Very, very few songs do that. It is us singing about our nation hood in evocative and stirring language.”
Chunn, who has publicly spoken about his own past issues with agoraphobia and his fear of leaving secure places that restricted his travel and forced him to leave Split Enz, called on musical industry friends Leza Corban and Callum Martin to help him with the musical production. Corban sorted the vocals and Martin, who is formerly of the Kiwi band The Checks, helped him with the musical backing and arrangement at Roundhead Studios. Former Split Enz mate Eddie Rayner added his magic when he mixed and mastered the track in his home studio.
“The final recording is triumphant,” Chunn says. “It captures the very essence of the song’s purpose, which is to portray a single New Zealand voice, a nation’s collective spirit and the summation of all of that under the powerful image of the Long White Cloud.”
Scott-Vincent and Chunn agreed from the outset that the artists to perform the song should be new talent – an ideal fit for Chunn’s “Play it Strange Trust”, which encourages young New Zealanders to develop song writing and musical performance skills. Chunn chose two young and blind vocalists he has been mentoring across several years.
One of the artists is not a complete newcomer to the spotlight. Natalie Te Paa, a talented musician from Takapuna, has performed many time before, including at the Attitude Awards. Blind from birth, the 20-year-old now combines her musical career with university studies.
The other singer, Cam Dawson, is a 15-year-old from Blenheim. Also blind, Dawson has featured on the Attitude programme on TVOne (Sundays at 8.30am) singing and playing the piano.
Scott-Vincent is calling on New Zealanders to join the awareness campaign and become ‘social messengers’ by sharing the Long White Cloud video via downloads (subs note: live from December 2) from AttitudeLive.com, YouTube , Spotify and iTunes.
“The nation has adopted songs as sports anthems before,” she says. “This is an original song with a Kiwi flavour. We are asking people to take a moment to stop and think about those more than a million people in New Zealand who live with mental health issues, disabilities and chronic ill-health. Everyone will know someone who is affected. December 3 is the day to stop and think how we can better support them.”
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