Anna Coddington’s music career has been a celebrated one - now finally, it’s a Silver Scroll winning one.

One of the highlights of the Aotearoa music calendar, the Silver Scroll Awards were held in Wellington on Tuesday night (8 October) - Coddington (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) was up against the likes of Stan Walker, Georgia Lines, SKILAA and Mermaidens for the coveted top prize. Coddington has been involved with the Silver Scroll Awards for many years as a performer, presenter, top five finalist, and top 20 nominee. She previously earned a top five spot in 2013 for Bird In Hand; has been in the top 20 four times since 2010.

This year, she’s achieved the premier accolade for songwriting in Aotearoa, for her powerful song Kātuarehe, co-written with Noema Te Hau III, Ruth Smith and Kawiti Waetford which is a fitting recognition of her recent exploration of writing waiata reo rua and waiata reo Māori, as well as reflecting her song’s hook-filled narrative expressing the sentiment of ‘kātuarehe’ – meaning: ‘to be outstanding / marvelous’.

A beaming Coddington told The Big Idea after receiving her gong “ It means a lot to me. Songwriting has always been my passion in music. I love lots of aspects of music, but it's really the songwriting that was always the hook for me.

“I think for us as a rōpū with my collaborators,…for a bilingual song to win this award, is he tohu pai tera - that's a really good sign., just the way things are changing and the acceptance of te reo Māori in the mainstream.”

Coddington has no hesitation in explains what made the Scroll so unique in the Aotearoa musical landscape.

“This award is voted on by our songwriting peers (APRA members), I think it's special. I know for me personally, I vote for the song that I like the most… unless I'm a finalist, then I just vote for myself,” she grins.”It's a nice feeling to get that approval from your fellow songwriters. That's a different process - I don't think that's how other awards in the industry are validated.”

She was blown away to see her song performed in Silver Scroll tradition - with another group of artists given their chance to put their own twist on the Scroll finalists. Coddington described AJA and friends’s performance as “crazy good - it was so amazing. Far out, AJA’s voice is insane - I should have just got you to sing the actual song. Too good. And Riki Gooch used to be my drummer, so that was really nice to see him as part of that performance as well.”

“Just bringing everyone together is massive. It's been so nice just to see all my friends - it can be a real grind, being a musician and being a songwriter, particularly now, you know. It's like, ‘here's your $2 cheque for your Spotify streams for the year’ - it's pretty tough. It can be quite up and down and but you come to a night like this and you feel really uplifted, you feel like it's worth doing.”

As highlighted last month on The Big Idea, there were multiple chances for songwriters to pull off the Silver Scroll/Maioha Award double - and it was completed by Waetford and Smith - who co-wrote the Maioha-winning He Rei Niho with singer/songwriter Jordyn Rapana (AKA Jordyn with a Why) and Dan Martin.

Rapana (Whāingaroa, Mulifanua Lalovi, Falelatai and Vaimoso) has had a rapid rise in the industry - selected to take part in the 2022 Reo Māori SongHubs where this song was written. In fact, that particular SongHub week also saw the creation of Coddington’s Silver Scroll success.

Rapana - who was a finalist last year - told The Big Idea that the Maioha category “really is a big celebration of the normalisation and revitalisation of te reo Māori. At the end of the day, that's what wins - our precious, precious reo that we've all fallen in love with. 

"Every collaborator that I've worked with - but also the other finalists who have also submitted incredible songs that my own sons love better than my own - we're all just celebrating that te reo Māori wins at the end of the day, and we're just so grateful for it.

“There are so many places in terms of our songwriting, in terms of our oratory kōrero, where te ao Māori is absolutely winning. I feel awards like this offer the rest of Aotearoa a little window into that world where te ao Māori already knows we're excelling. So hopefully we keep widening that window, we keep busting down those walls so that eventually it becomes the mainstream. I'm really excited for the future of waiata Māori, but also Māori artists.”

 In another double produced on the night, Karl Sölve Steven took his domination of the original score categories to a new level.  As previewed on The Big Idea, Steven has been a constant winner in either the  Best Original Music in a Feature Film Award or the equivalent Series category. This year, he’s claimed both.

In the series category, his work with Rob Thorne on local true crime series Black Coast Vanishings took top prize, while Steven’s compositions alongside Jason Smith on feature documentary Never Look Away was also triumphant - taking Steven’s overall Silver Scroll Awards tally to seven.

The SOUNZ Contemporary Award went to Nathaniel Otley for his exploration of the movement of the waters surrounding Aotearoa in the convergence of oceans, created as part of Otley’s 2023 composer in residence position with the NZSO National Youth Orchestra.  

Jazz performer and composer Mike Nock - profiled here - was also celebrated and welcomed into the NZ Music Hall of Fame for his achievements as a performer, collaborator, musician, pianist, composer and educator.