Music 101's Kara Rickard shares special songs from her life

Faced with the difficult job of picking just six favourite tracks, Kara Rickard has new empathy for her weekly guests on The Mixtape.

"I tried to pick songs that have punctuated little spots along my life, but they also have a good story.

"That's better than just saying 'I picked it because I like it', I think, anyway," the Music 101 host tells Tony Stamp.

Born in Christchurch, at six, her family moved back to Raglan when whanau land that had been confiscated by the Crown was given back to her grandmother, the land rights activist Tuaiwa 'Eva' Rickard.

"[Eva] lived up the hill from where we grew up, and she was the person I would go to when I got in trouble. She'd give me lollies, Christmas presents, and spoil us, like a grandparent should.

"It wasn't until her funeral when I was 15, and it was on the TV and on the cover of the newspaper, and thousands of people turned up, that I really had an inkling of what she'd done for our people and how loved she was and how important she was.

"On the whenua of my ancestors, my dad still lives in the house that we grew up in, on that land that my grandmother got back.

Although neither of her parents spoke te reo Māori, Rickard says she learned to speak the language at a young age through her school's bilingual unit.

"Growing up in Raglan on our whenua, there was always kaupapa on, and I was always at the marae, so being in te ao Māori was a big part of my childhood."

For Rickard, studying te reo was the best part of her time at the University of Waikato, where in 2003 she graduated with a bachelor's degree in te reo Māori, industrial relations and human resource management - on the recommendation of her older sister.

"I thought, 'Oh yeah, helping people who have got shitty bosses might be a fun job'. And then I graduated and never used my degree once."

After training to be a flight attendant, Rickard was preparing for her first working flight the next week when she heard the newly opened TV station Whakaata Māori was looking for a production assistant who could speak te reo.

"Because I'm impulsive, I said, 'Yeah, sure. I'm supposed to start flying for Air New Zealand next week, but I'll come to Auckland and see what it's about. And then I never ended up flying, either."

Rickard relocated to Auckland for the Whakaata Māori job. A bit down the track and, and despite having no TV experience - she was invited to host their live Thursday night music show Coast.

"They basically just handed me a microphone and said, 'Live TV, go for your life.' I've always just had an attitude of, I'll just give it a go. But I do, in retrospect, look back at what I was doing in that show and think that I wasn't very good.

"I had no experience and didn't know what I was doing. But I guess the thing that helped me was I really liked music, and I liked talking to people, so that was really helpful."

On over 100 episodes of Coast in 2005 and 2006, Rickard hosted emerging artists like David Dallas, Kora, Savage and Mareko for their first-ever live performances.

After finishing up there, with no previous radio experience, she was hired to read news bulletins on the dance music radio station George FM, eventually co-hosting their Drive show then, for ten years, George Breakfast,alongside Tammy Davis and General Lee.

"I always would say 'I hate drum and bass', but after working at George, I just fell in love with it. There's so much great music and so many great artists that I met working at George, which I'll be forever grateful for. It definitely broadened my musical horizons."

Because knowing how to speak te reo Māori has been so valuable in Rickard's own life, she enrolled her three children in a full-immersion Kura kaupapa.

"It gives you a sense of who you are, being able to speak your language, so I wanted that for my kids... They speak Māori better than I do. They love it, and I love that for them."

After two decades away from Raglan, Rickard moved her family back to her coastal hometown last year.

"When I had kids, I just really felt the pull of wanting to go home and raise my kids on the land that I grew up on and kind of give them the upbringing that I had, which is why we moved home.

"Once you have kids, having grandparents, cousins, aunties, uncles, and a real community to help you raise them is really important. I wanted to move home by the time my first child was ready to go to school.

"We didn't get there till she was 14, but we got there. We've been home a year, and it's been amazing."

"This song reminds me of my dad a lot. He played in bands growing up. I used to go to the RSA or the [Hamilton] Cossie Club and watch him play music. Still to this day, on the last Thursday of every month, he plays at the Raglan RSA. And he's nearly 80 - he's 79 - so that's quite cool.

"This song is a song that him that I have sung in classic RSA karaoke competitions, and it's won us quite a few meat packs… It reminds me of my dad, dancing with him at the RSA and singing. I actually don't think this song is in his key, but he just sings it because it's always the one that I like singing at karaoke. So yeah, shout out to my dad."

Opensouls performed on Rickard's first-ever episode of Coast.

The Auckland band - whose members included Julian Dyne, Chip Matthews, Scott Towers from Fat Freddy's Drop, Silver Scroll winner Steph Brown and Jeremy Toy - were amazing, she says.

"They've all gone on to do incredible things."

"Radiohead was one of the first bands that I really became obsessed with. I got their album, The Bends, for Christmas one year when I was 13. Fell in love with it and just became obsessed with them.

"This song is off their album, OK Computer, which is still one of my favourite albums of all time.

"There's so many Radiohead songs I could pick, but I picked this one because I actually fell through a roof listening to this song. It's such a beautiful, tranquil song, as well."

Just after Rickard started working at George FM, she was in Fiji for a DJing gig when she first heard this 2012 track by UK electronic duo Disclosure and singer-songwriter Sam Smith.

"I was pregnant with my son, like massively pregnant… [George FM host] Nick Dwyer dropped this song on the dance floor, and everyone was like 'Whoa'. It became one of those classic George FM songs that just continued to be played year in and year out."

The 2011 album Bon Iver came out a month before Rickard had her first child, a daughter.

"I listened to this album a lot while I was pregnant and when I was recovering from cancer, which is crazy, because it's such a depressing, sad album.

"The chorus is basically him singing that he's still alive, which I was still alive as well... I just love this album, and I listen to it a lot.

After having her third child, doing breakfast radio, Rickard was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, which inflamed her connective tissue.

"I couldn't lift my arms, I couldn't open my mouth, my knees were falling, and I just kept going to work every day... When I got better, I decided to do a fight."

Rickard, whose dad ran the Kikushin Karate Dojo in Raglan for 40 years, has done martial arts her whole life.

"I started just going to the gym and doing martial arts again. And then decided to have an MMA class. I trained for five months, six days a week, learning striking, Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, and it was amazing. Then had my fight and got a first round TKO (technical knockout).

"['Final Form'] was the walkout song for my MMA fight."