Nayland’s Rockquest finalist

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“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.”