Double the fun for Rockquest finalist

From playing bass with The Beths to taking on New Zealand’s top young musicians, it’s been an industrious year for Nayland College’s Kahu Sanson-Burnett.

The Year 13 student has made the Smokefree Rockquest national finals next month for his duo JOLA BURNS with his cousin Alyahna Sanson-Rejouis.

But also, his other band Parallel Park has been invited to play as the guest band for the event on 16 September in Auckland, which means he will be taking the stage twice on the night.

“It’s pretty crazy,” he says. “There are over 800 acts who enter around the country, but to be one of the top acts and also get to play with Parallel Park is pretty amazing.”

Although he says the nerves have started to kick in, he’s looking forward to the event at Q Theatre.

“It will be awesome meeting all the other musicians.”

To add to his success this year, Kahu also got to play bass for Kiwi indie rock band The Beths in Wanaka at the YAMI SouNZ Summit in May, and in the same month travelled to Auckland for an APRA AMCOS mentorship at Parachute Studios.

Kahu started learning the guitar when he was around seven years old, and hasn’t looked back.

“My parents would get me to practice for five minutes a day, but in the last four or five years I just started getting more and more into it.”

He says his musical relationship with his cousin Alyahna, who is in Year 10 at Nelson College for Girls, has come about naturally.

“When we were kids, we used to sit around and I’d play guitar and she would sing, but in around 2021, we started seriously making music. I made a few electronic songs which I sent to her, and she’d come up with the lyrics.”

Kahu says the name JOLA BURNS is a mix of one of Alyahna’s middle names (Jola) and his surname (Burnett). He describes their sound as a mix of “pop, electronic, a bit of drum and bass, reggae, and a bunch of different genres chucked into that”.

He says one of his biggest influences is Australian producer Flume.

“But I’m also in a school jazz band and a metal band.”

Kahu will continue on the musical path next year, as he has been accepted to do a bachelor of commercial music at Massey in Wellington.

Alyahna says making the Smokefree Rockquest national final is an “awesome opportunity”.

“Even if we don’t win it won’t feel like a loss because it feels so amazing to have gotten this far.”