Blue Smoke

?Come up to Paekakariki / in the land of the tiki / where you spend all your days at the beach.OCO ItOCOs another Saturday night in 1950s Auckland. Downtown, nightclubs are banning the jive because the exuberant couples disturb the cautious fox-trotters. Over in Freemans Bay, the Maori Community Centre is the ?jazziest, jumpingest place in the cityOCO where sweaty men in zoot suits feed on Maori bread and huge tubs of potatoes. In Blue Smoke, Chris Bourke recovers the lost dawn of New Zealand popular music in the twentieth century. Bourke brings to life the musical worlds of New Zealanders at home (buying sheet music from Beggs, listening to the radio, learning ?the twistOCO) and out on the town (singing in community choirs, seeing Dave Brubeck on tour, jiving to Johnny Devlin). Beginning with the return of the Kiwi Concert Parties from World War I and the arrival of jazz, Blue Smoke chronicles half a century of change ? with the impact of World War II, the rise of swing, country, the Hawaiian sound and then rockOCOnOCOroll, the development of a TANZA and a local recording industry, and the impact of tours by overseas stars. From Kiwi concert parties to the Howard Morrison Quartet, from Ruru KaraitianaOCOs ?Blue SmokeOCO to Ken AveryOCOs ?Tea at Te KuitiOCO, from swing to folk, from WellingtonOCOs Majestic Cabaret to ChristchurchOCOs Wintergarden, Bourke brings to life the people, places, and sounds of a world we have lost. It is a world in which Maori and Pakeha New Zealanders gradually developed a melody, a rhythm, and a voice that made sense on these islands."