The Brothers Kora

WHEN IT COMES TO MUSICAL GENIUS, it seems that big things come out of small towns.

Te Awamutu, for example, produced national treasures Neil and Tim Finn, but Whakatāne has arguably an even bigger claim to fame; the sometime sunshine capital of New Zealand is home to a creative juggernaut that has produced the soundtracks to our summers for years: the brothers Kora.

Brad, Laughton, Francis and Stuart have helped give us – in addition to Kora, the band that bears their name – the wildly popular L.A.B, the groundbreaking Modern Māori Quartet, standout appearances on stage with the likes of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and turns on the big screen in The Pā Boys. Oh, and one of them even sang on Kim Dotcom’s album. Keeping track of the multiple creative threads that weave through the Kora story can make your head spin.

None of this is surprising given that the brothers were raised in a family where music was ever present – and that they were on stage before they made it to high school.

Together with father Tait Kora, various combinations of the brothers made up a family covers band that played pubs and RSAs and cossie clubs around the eastern Bay of Plenty.

“We all have the work ethic, we got that from a young age from the old fulla”

“We’d be on stage from about six or seven and usually play Ōpōtiki on Wednesday and Thursday nights and Whakatāne on Friday and Saturday nights,” Brad Kora recalls.

“We (the brothers) were all underage but no one seemed to care in those days! You’d never get away with it today. By the time we were like 12 or 14 we knew a couple of hundred songs, and if we weren’t playing, we were rehearsing, mostly up to six hours a day. Dad was a hard taskmaster and real old school – if we stuffed up, we’d get a whack with a ruler! But man we learnt our stuff and it kinda made us perfectionists and hard taskmasters – at least that’s what quite a few musicians we’ve tried to work with say!”

We must have played The Comm a hundred times. We were all underage, but no one seemed to care in those days!

Their first band was called Zig Zag and featured father Tait as well as Aunty Sheree on keyboards. Then, at school, the brothers formed the eclectically titled Aunty Beatrice and, with the help of Whakatāne High School music teacher Tom Bayliss, won the Smokefree Rockquest with Mince Pie, a song they’d written about hanging out during lunch hour and sharing, um, pies. Aunty Beatrice then went on to win the Battle of the Bands three years running and not only a few people felt that these boys were bound for big things. And they were not wrong.

Kora – the band – came to be in 2002 when Laughton and Fran were both impoverished students at Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School, studying theatre and dance and playing in restaurants for food. They were noticed by a member of Fat Freddy’s Drop and the offer of a gig resulted in them throwing together a literal ‘band of brothers’ for their first live performance, which just happed to be in front of 11,000 people. An album – recorded in an Edgecumbe cowshed naturally – followed and stayed in the Top 20 for 51 weeks, while the band simultaneously built a solid rep as a seriously good live act.

Laughton and Brad left the band in 2013, with the former concentrating on theatre and work as a musical director, while Brad drums in L.A.B with Stu, and Fran is up front and centre with the Modern Māori Quartet (as well as appearing in the aforementioned Pā Boys). The side projects – Brad for example somehow finds time to run a gym in Whakatāne – are simply too numerous to mention!

“I think we’re all the same but different!” Brad says. “We all have the work ethic, we got that from a young age from the old fulla, but then we also all have strengths of our own. And I guess that is why we have gone in different directions while also all ending up in the entertainment business in one way or another.”

Keeping track of the multiple creative threads that weave through the Kora story can make your head spin.

And though the brothers remain close, anyone with a brother or sister knows that sibling relationships are never plain sailing. “Oh yeah for sure! We’ve probably had punch ups all over the world! But it’s a pretty punishing industry we’re in, and we’re all really competitive, so it’s not gonna be any other way is it! And at the heart of it there’s a whole lotta love. We’ve been through so much together over the years, from playing waltzes at the pub to headlining festivals, sometimes it doesn’t seem real!”

And here’s to many, many more years of the almost unreal for the brothers Kora.