Palmerston North musician takes on first music festival

Palmerston North born musician Hana Tamatea will be taking her vocal chords to bigger venues after this year's successful performance at her first ever music festival.

Since studying a contemporary music course, Hana (also known as Hanz) has been performing with her band Ripple Effect, who play a mixture of Reggae and ska-punk.

The seven-piece band performed at East Coast Vibes music festival this year, which is hosted by Aotearoa Entertainment.

“We were really lucky to be a part of that and hopefully that’s our foot in the door for more gigs and working with more New Zealand artists,” Hana said.

The group work closely together to make their own tunes, she explained.

“It starts with Sage, the lead of the band, he’ll think of an idea and then work with the instruments, then we all work up from there and add our layers in.”

Hana has been described as the Amy Winehouse of New Zealand and works with many artists to express her musical interests.

“I find myself writing a lot about love or about personal emotions or experiences,” she said about writing her own songs.

“I find it really easy just to say how I’m feeling, I just blurb it out kind of like a poem.”

The 22 year old said her musical journey started from a young age, as she was humming and singing ever since she could make a noise.

“And I always tapped on pots and pans as a baby.”

Hana also works on her R&B music with her good friend Christian Perry. They record their jam session and work on elements from there.

“In that moment of time you’ll find a really golden lyric, note, riff that we build on,” she said.

Hana and Ripple Effect will be working on new music over this winter in preparation to release for summer.