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Rawiri's reflection on his 2011 winning song

Rawiri Kapa-Hakeney from Hamilton talks about what inspired him and how he wrote his winning song What's it all been for?

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This song is inspired by the idea that our world is being polluted and destroyed by chemicals being filtered into the earth. I have specifically chosen world farmers as a target. They have massive herds of cattle and sheep that stampede the earth every day, and like anything living, our planet is getting old and tired. To feed their livestock, farmers feel the need to speed up the growth of the grass with dirty polluting chemicals known as fertilisers.

I wrote this song because I think strongly about this issue, but also to give a sense of hope, so that the future generations might live in a world with the ... qualities much like ours .

When I first started ... to plan ideas for the social justice topic ... a nursery rhyme clicked into my head – 'Baa baa black sheep' and I set to work attempting to write my lyrics. In the process of writing the lyrics I was searching on Youtube and started to listen to the NZ reggae band 1814. Their song 'Morning star' gave me the idea for the chord progression in my song. I made many mistakes in my lyric writing during my draft but the final copy I have published I think is pretty good.

When I was practising my song in the garage, singing the lyrics, I used a standard nylon string classical guitar. But when it came to the recording I had the drums, three different guitars, and keyboard, a bass guitar and the lead vocals.

[I was] inspired to do great things with this song and it will continue to help me venture into the wonderful world of music in the future.