The Mixtape: Deva Mahal
Photo:
supplied
Hawaiian-born New Zealand musician Deva Mahal has had quite the 2025.
From watching her dad win his fifth Grammy Award, to releasing her latest single
South Coast
featuring Estère, even preforming at the Fringe Festival audience in Wellington, Deva Mahal has been busy.
Stacked schedule aside, Deva Mahal made some time to sit and select the soulful songs that have sound tracked her life and career in music with Kara Rickard on The Mixtape.
Songs Played:
Karyn White - Superwoman
Mary J. Blige - I'm Goin' Down
Stevie Wonder - I Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer
Des'ree - Kissing You
Frank Ocean - Pink Matter
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
8 hours ago
- RNZ News
Hi Viz Manaaki: The story of our Maori Wardens
Mātua Peter Walden Photo: SUPPLIED/RNZ Māori Wardens have a long and proud history in Aotearoa providing advice, support and aroha to the communities they don't just serve - but help to build. Documented in a new podcast - Hi Viz Manaaki: Māori Wardens - hosted by Murdoch Ngahau and Dr Amber Hamill, their story is a particularly personal one for Murdoch. A chance meeting with Kirikiriroa Māori Warden, Joyce Williams as an 11-year-old, changed his life. Murdoch and Amber who also co-wrote and produced the series, talk to Mihi about how a chat at a community radio station became a six-part series. Download and follow Hi Viz Manaaki hosted by Murdoch Ngahau and Dr Amber Hamill for free or wherever you get good podcasts. Dr Amber Hamill, Richard Kingi and Murdoch Ngahau Photo: SUPPLIED/RNZ
RNZ News
14 hours ago
- RNZ News
Cleo Laine, UK jazz singer who performed with Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra, dies at 97
By William Schomberg, Reuters Cleo Laine performs with jazz musician John Dankworth (1927-2010) at the Brecon Jazz Festival in Brecon, Wales in August 1995. Photo: Getty Images British jazz singer Cleo Laine, who performed with musical greats including Frank Sinatra and starred as an actor in London's West End and on Broadway, has died aged 97, the Guardian newspaper reported on Friday (UK time), citing a statement from her children Jacqui and Alec. Born to an English mother and a Jamaican father in a suburb of London in 1927, she initially worked as a hairdresser, a hat-trimmer and a librarian. She married in 1946 and had a son while still a teenager. Driven on by her dream of becoming a singer, she divorced and got her big break in 1951, when she joined the band of English saxophonist and clarinettist John Dankworth at 24. Dankworth's band decided her name was too long - at the time she thought she had been born Clementine Campbell, though a passport application later revealed her mother had used her own surname Hitching on the birth certificate. Cleo Laine performs in the studio, with the producer Norman Granz who produced the recording of the George Gershwin folk opera, Porgy and Bess, in Los Angeles, California, on September 25, 1976. Photo: Getty Images / Afro Newspaper/Gado The men of the Dankworth Seven band thought her name was too cumbersome for a poster, and that her nickname Clem was too cowboy-like. They settled on a new stage persona for her by drawing "Cleo" and "Laine" from hats. In 1958, she and Dankworth married. Their home became a magnet for London's jazz set: friends included stars from across the Atlantic such as Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young and Dizzy Gillespie. After acting as well as singing in Britain through the 1960s, Laine toured Australia in 1972 and performed at New York's Lincoln Centre. The recording of a further show, at Carnegie Hall, won her a Grammy. Recordings included Porgy and Bess with Ray Charles. In 1992 she appeared with Frank Sinatra for a series of shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, but she was best known for her work with Dankworth's bands. He later became her musical director. Cleo Laine performing at the Cafe Royal in London. Photo: AFP / Collection Christophel / Longhur The couple built their own auditorium in the grounds of their home near London and were friends with the late Princess Margaret, the sister of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Their two children went on to become musicians. Dankworth - who Laine described as being "joined at the hip" with her - died in 2010. Hours after his death, Laine performed a scheduled show in their auditorium, announcing the news about her husband only at the end of the concert. -Reuters
RNZ News
a day ago
- RNZ News
From Siberia to the South Pacific
This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions. Novosibirsk Opera House; Lev Sivkov's home town. Photo: Alexander Klink If Lev Sivkov wasn't a musician, maybe he'd be a farmer. The Siberian-born cellist is in New Zealand to play the solo role in Britten's Cello Symphony with Orchestra Wellington , along with making chamber music as one third of the Levansa Trio. Growing up in Siberia gave him a deep appreciation of nature, something he also enjoys when he comes to New Zealand. It's Sivkov's third visit to Aotearoa. His friendship with fellow Levansa players (New Zealand-based violinist Andrew Beer and pianist Sarah Watkins) has made him more than an occasional fixture in the NZ chamber music scene. The Levansa Trio already has one album out on the Atoll label and there are plans to record another during the cellist's current trip. Levansa Trio: Andrew Beer (vln), Sarah Watkins (pno), Lev Sivkov (cello), Photo: Supplied Wellington Chamber Music Trust Sivkov spoke with RNZ Concert ahead of his gig with Orchestra Wellington, and part-way through his tour with the Levansa Trio. He certainly likes to mix things up. A few weeks back he was leading the cello section of the orchestra of Opernhaus Zürich in a concert performance of Brahms' 4th Symphony. Sivkov met the New Zealand members of the Levansa Trio through an ex-pat Kiwi currently living in Switzerland. This year's tour has already taken the ensemble to Hamilton, and there are also has concerts in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and Wairarapa. Sivkov describes Britten's Cello Symphony, which he wrote for the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, as a "very intellectual" work, but one which rewards close listening. "It's an old joke about Russian literature: there are books where the reader suffers, there are books where the writer suffers, but when both reader and writer suffer - that is the great book of Russian literature." He suspects Britten had that sense of Russian depth when he wrote the Cello Symphony. Sivkov still has a soft spot for the "tough" old-school Russian teachers of his youth, although he wouldn't necessarily teach his own students that way. Maybe something between the old Russian approach and the more liberal ways of Western Europe. Does he miss Russia? Yes, although if he went back to Novosibirsk he probably wouldn't work as a full-time cellist, maybe he'd take up farming - although he's not exactly sure what sort of farmer he would be. Funnily enough, the last concert of his current NZ tour with the Levansa Trio will be on an apple orchard in Wairarapa. "Perhaps I can discuss farming options when I am there," he jokes. RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump and cellist Lev Sivkov. Photo: RNZ
