Bio

Born in waiwhetu, te upoko o te ika o aotearoa. A self sustainable maori pa that was slowly eaten away by suburbia, public works act, river protection act. Our gardens, artesian waters, rivers, our pa just got smaller and smaller every time we moved with the last move into a GROVE that had 20 odd houses in it but no room for big gardens, no more artesian flow, no more land to grow.

Suburbia system grew around us so we needed to express ourselves so what we did was jam it up in a garage that was built behind one of these houses in the GROVE, our new pa, and this is our ROOTS. the mean times growing up with waiata all around, te kuia to the uncles and the rest of the whanau I got tired of DJing clubs by my self and wanting to build a sound system so in 2005 recorded an album in te reo maori. This exposed some talent among the whanau and we started building up a whanau of jammers who were kean. we started jamming in the shed coming up with a few waiata and sent our sound away to the Parihaka International Peace festival komiti in 2006.

We were in, our 1st gig outside the shed. This was to become our debut live gig and playing alongside bands that inspired us such as Fat Freddys Drop, Katchafire and Kora was a mean as experience and to top it off, jamming on the fattest sound system we had ever played on. heaps better than our 3 home stereo pa system in the koros shed. In 2007 we also featured at the same festival, this time on the visionaries stage and BILLY TK SNR was our special guest. 2008 seen us jam at Parihaka a 3rd time and then Atiawa Toa FMs annual gala day Te Ra o te Raukura. We also received a manuhiri at our marae, he was edutainer Yasus Afari a dub poet from Jamaica, we put down a jah hangi and jammed at the koros shed with him and the bradas from Hikoikoi along with Matiu Te Huki, one of our meanest homegrown jams so wha! As we move on into 09 we jammed again at Parihaka for the quads, again at Te Ra o te Raukura for the 2nd, and jammed at Backstage Bar in Petone in support of Hikoikoi's album release tour.

Where to now, still little progress, a new studio set up parked up learing but hopefuly one day we shall move foward as one thru the recession, when the depression, for another Grove Roots session.......here we are doin it again 2010, Parihaka coming up and vocals are down, people getting laid off but we still soldier on as we will take some taonga puoro with strings beats and pieces with maori lyrics to the stage of the peace festival with the mean line up including the DROP..mean we got us some vocals and a keys mean cant wait....Parihaka 2010 doin it again on a GROVE ROOTS session with special guests from Chant Down Babylon Ngahekenga O Carroll who sings Island in the sun, Angie Smith and Hariata Simmonds who both jam in Takitoru. Also Ants Smith who jams with Ngatoto and Rainbow Country and Darren Sigly from Batucada Sound Machine and Wellington Batucada. And of course the regular Alastair Fraser of Woolshed sessions, Tohu with Charles Royal, Tahu and Coaster with the kuzzys holding down the roots. Mean jam as we opened up the festival Friday at 3pm with some maori styles before colonising. Had a live on air jam on REO FM which was also a practise for our Te Ra set, first radio jam for the whanau. Te Ra o te Raukura 2010 we did it again with the Parihaka crew minus Alastair and Darren, with the addition of Puawai from Chant Down and RnB singer/DJ, Tepa.

2010 to 2011 seen the recession of GROVE ROOTS and CHANTDOWN was the new crew. 2012 seen the band get out of the depression and have made a comeback on stages across the region and the journey continues..........

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