2004 Media Articles

Public Address - Hard News

Welcome Home Love

 Original content copyright 2004 to Russell Brown at Public Address's Hard News

Original article is at:    Hard News

Date:                         30 March, 2004

By:                            Russell Brown

 Welcome home, love | Mar 30, 2004 10:16

The irony of the Herald's lavish front-page treatment yesterday of Bic Runga's "controversial" comments to the Belfast Telegraph about New Zealand race relations is that it left out the good stuff.

The author of the Telegraph story describes her album Beautiful Collision as "a marvellous record that recalls the Cocteau Twins, Bjork and Kate Bush" and notes that she is being hailed (at the suggestion of her record company) as the new Norah Jones.

It would seem that after all that work trying to crack America, Europe has been good for Bic: the 'Get Some Sleep' single has been added to the Radio 2 playlist, and Public Address reader Greg Clark tells me that Beautiful Collision is on promotion at Tesco and being advertised on prime-time TV.

She has been accorded a feature interview in the Sunday Times, in which 'Get Some Sleep' is praised as "sublime pop", and The Times also reviewed her Dublin showcase, declaring that "it's hard to believe that anything other than mega-stardom awaits this prodigiously talented and strikingly beautiful 27-year-old singer." She was featured in Showbiz Ireland ("we are going to hear a lot more from this bright star") and appeared at Ireland's Meteor Music Awards.

And then, as luck would have it, she got off the plane yesterday to NZ a racist place, Bic Runga tells Irish paper. Welcome home, love.

A press-release was forthcoming, occasioning this morning's Bic Runga finds 'racism' headlines heartbreaking:

"No country is without racism, I grew up with it, that was my experience. It has not made me bitter or ashamed.

"New Zealand is a beautiful and unique place. I love my country and I am proud to represent it internationally."

The press release, issued by a public relations company, also said Runga found it heartbreaking to arrive back in New Zealand and read headlines about what she had said.

"Sensational headlines do not truthfully convey what I think, nor who I am."

However, she did not dispute that she made the controversial comments.

Runga declined the Herald's request for an interview.

Surprise me. So did she, as a Maori-Chinese kid growing up in Hornby, a working-class suburb of Christchurch, encounter racism? It would be surprising if she hadn't. And can relationships between Maori and other New Zealanders be a bit fraught? Demonstrably, one would have thought. But the Herald's treatment of the story, such as it was, was way over the top. I am put in mind of Blam Blam Blam ..