ARDIJAH are Watching U

Press, 14 September 1988, Page 26

ARDIJAH

are Watching U

GARTH CARTWRIGHT looks at Ardijah, the Auckland group who have set a new musical trend in New Zealand. “We’ve made it so everyone can play funk,” they say:

We saw Betty, just went Wow!

With the release of “Watching U” Auckland funk band Ardijah make their first appearance on the New Zealand music scene for 1988. Ardijah were the first winners of the Rheineck Rock Award and their 1987 self-titled album that resulted from the $30,000 prize has nowachieved gold status. The band leader, Ryan Monga, recently reworked the album, resulting in its rerelease in LP and CD form with a new cover and “Watching U” and two extra tracks added.

“I’ve done a few things with the album,” says Monga, “just tightened it up, brought up a few levels. I’d like to remix it, but time is money and we’ve not got that.” “Watching U” is easily Ardijah’s most commercial release yet. It is more pop than funk and Monga hopes it will provide the band with something which has so far escaped them — a chart-topper.

“It’s a mellow sound,” says Monga of “Watching U.” It’s an easy thing for people to listen to but

there’s a funk feeling underneath in the drum sound. Radio Aotearoa thrashed it but I’m not sure if the other stations have picked up on it yet.” The single’s B-side is a forceful reworking of Stargard’s 70s disco classic “Which Way Is Up.” The song has been a mainstay in Ardijah’s live set for years and their version maintains the powerful dance-floor style. “We really kicked it on that,” says Ryan. “I’ve liked performing that song for a long time so it was good to record it. It’s quite nice, you know, you can cool out to the A-side of the single and dance to the B-side.” This has not been an easy year for Ardijah. They parted company with their manager

and after going through a succession of band members Monga decided that an enforced break would be beneficial for songwriting and working on their musical technique. The best event of the year has been a trip the band took to Singapore. “Time Makes A Wine” (an earlier Ardijah single) has been released there,” says Monga “and was getting heavy airplay and the album was coming out so the Tourist And Publicity Department sent us over. Normally they send a Maori cultural group over so it was a novel idea to send a modern band. “Singapore is a pretty strange place — it costs $3O to get into a nightclub and $2O for your first drink, $l5 for your second drink. They’ve got very

strict legislation so as to discourage young people from getting drunk, so we ended up playing to rich older people as not many

young people could afford to see us.” Ironically the largest contingent of New Zealanders in Singapore, the

army, were “in the bush” for the fortnight Ardijah were playing in Singapore. “On our last night all

the Army boys turned up just after we’d finished playing,” says Monga. “It was a real downer that they missed us so to show my appreciation I went out on the town with them and that was a buzz.”

Perhaps the best known former member of Ardijah is Barbara Griffen of The Holidaymakers. Monga’s not very happy with so many other acts makingmoney out of playing funk while Ardijah, who began playing funk nine years ago in South Auckland when funk was snarled at by those hipsters who now love to dance to it, are still to reap the benefits of a musical form they helped pioneer in New Zealand. “I feel we’ve been ripped off,” says Monga. “A lot of people jumped on the bandwagon and are making money out of it but we’re still here paying bills.,

“Acts like ‘When The Cat’s Away,’ they wouldn’t be playing funk if it wasn’t for us. We’ve made

it so everyone can play funk. Yet all those people who suddenly want to play funk, they’ll jump on the next trend that comes along.”

Ardijah — the name is an amalgamation of the initials of two of the founder members of the band and the Rastafarian word Jah (Bob Marley being huge when the band formed) — took shape at a South Auckland talent quest that Monga and singer and wife BettyAnne entered separately. “We played as a band,” recalls Monga, “and she was a soloist. We were Ardijah way back then, just a four-piece, we didn’t have a female vocalist. That was 1979. “And then we saw Betty

and just went ‘wow.’ We both lost the talent quest (chuckles). So we thought instead of wasting good talent we might as well team up.”

Ardijah’s early years were spent playing the south Auckland nightclub circuit where their reputation developed so much that people from the inner city started turning up to hear them. This encouraged Monga to put Ardijah on the rock circuit.

“We were a six-piece in the clubs,” says Monga. “We had percussion and drums and we used to do all kinds of stuff like Santana. Our drummer was really good and we’d break out into a really wild percussive jam and people wouldn’t know what hit them.

“There was a real buzz there. You just had to see us in the clubs ... we enjoyed it, the audiences enjoyed it, and we began getting a following. We used to pack those South Auckland clubs out.

People came to see us rather than to dance. “Then we started seeing city faces — the bassist from The Chills, Justin, he used to come and see us a lot. So now we're taking it to the people, spreading it round.” Ardijah have spent the best part of this year off the road. They now have a new lineup, one which Monga promises will “just blow you away,” and plan to tour soon.

“People haven’t see us for a long time,” says Monga, “but I’ll tell you that it’s been well worth the wait. We’ve got a great line-up, really expanded the band — there are still holes here and there, still cleaning up to do, but the work’s being done. I’d like to take the band to Australia when the album is released there.

“It’s going to be a new fresh start — we are in control of everything now. If we make the wrong decisions we have only ourselves to blame.”