Samara Alofa: AN EXPERIMENTAL AOTEAROA ARTIST

Samara Alofa is a music artist and producer who has been telling stories through their work in the New Zealand language, Aotearoa. As a songwriter and a multi-instrumentalist, she has managed to use her skills to capture messages that mainly describe the experiences of a “soft punk” culture.

Samara made her debut in 2020 with an album titled Earth Punk when she carefully told stories about the punk subculture, soft punk. The quality of being soft punk perhaps stems from the somewhat rebellious nature of her music. At the same time, the album was a collection of stories related to her experience as an indigenous person. She treated each song like a diary entry, recording her thoughts about specific life experiences during the shift into adulthood. However, unlike diary entries, these stories and personal journeys were shared with the world.

That did instill a certain quality in the overall lyricism: deeply personal stories that were also relatable to other people, especially minorities and marginalized persons who were forming their own ideas after questioning everything they had come to learn. This quality has automatically brought a sense of uniqueness to her work, making it a treat to listen to and experience for listeners who can relate to the words and even those who do not.

This album was released only two years after Samara Alofa started tinkering with music production software and got into creating and producing music. Before music production, however, Samara Alofa was exposed to music within the church for the most part. From a young age, she was enthralled by how several musicians within a band came together to create harmonious art that made the experience of going to church so memorable.

Eventually, she also sang along at the church and enjoyed being able to express her creativity through it, even though it was pretty limited at that point. She also joined a band in high school and sang liturgical songs, which was most of what she knew, but she didn’t stop. That upbringing eventually helped shape her own ideas. A mixture of Christianity and her whakapapa helped her develop ideas that challenged her own understanding of being a colonized person.

While these aspects of her music certainly help make it unique, there’s also a rawness that is essential here. There’s a rawness and emotional honesty in every one of Samara Alofa’s albums and the other singles she has released since then.

At the same time, their ability to play and incorporate various live musical instruments also helps give her work a level of musicality that makes her music enjoyable to listeners. Samara Alofa is still relatively new to the music scene, but her conviction to create music that is true to herself has already helped her garner fans. Samara has also said that she is continuing to work on new music, bringing new experiences for listeners with a greater variety of live instrumentation.