The ‘MAYJUN’ genre - Aotearoa’s fresh boy band on the block

MAYJUN, Aotearoa’s fresh boy band on the block are sending what they describe as ‘eclectic’ waves into the music space by challenging cultural stereotypes.

The Pasifika trio, made up of Samoan artists Jeremiah Fale, Tivoli Levi, and Elijah Mcpherson are the first New Zealand boy band since the likes of Shepherd’s Reign to dabble in the pop/punk rock music genre.

They said that the general response to the music they are releasing has been “Finally, we have some Polynesian boys doing something different.”

Even in the face of ‘tall poppy syndrome’ infecting creative spaces amongst rangatira in Aotearoa, they said the need for something different outweighs the negativity received from some people.

“Polynesian people don’t really like change.

‘They see it and kind of hate on it. So it’s cool that we’re doing something different and hopefully we can inspire other people to be comfortable with themselves,” said Fale.

Mcpherson said that while their ethnicities do bring a refreshing take to the genres they are exploring, what they really want to convey is an inspiration for anybody of any culture to become comfortable in what they enjoy.

While they said they are capitalizing off the fact they are Islanders in this genre, they didn’t go into it with their ethnicities being at the forefront of what they’re doing.

“At the end of the day we’re just musicians. Having our faces on the front of this type of music will hopefully inspire a bunch of other people to become comfortable doing something like this, even if that’s not necessarily our genre or the genre we are in right now,” he said.

“The big thing is representation,” said Levi.

MAYJUN released their first single ‘Jealous’ in March of this year, with new music soon to be released in the coming months.