It started as a local radio contest for school kids singing cover songs.
Nearly four decades later, Smokefree Rockquest boasts a long list of alumni who have topped international charts and still win awards.
But it is the 90,000 young performers who’ve taken to the stage since 1989 who are the pride and joy of the two music teachers who founded it, Glenn Common and Pete Rainey.
In an industry of more setbacks than successes, where small live music venues are shutting down, an increasing number of students are competing.
“The numbers are what makes it a good news story,” says Common. “It’s not just for a select few. We’ve worked hard to make sure we’ve removed as many barriers as we can for students getting involved.”
The 2026 regional winners of Smokefree Rockquest have just been announced and they have until September to polish their act for the national awards, with a top prize of $10,000 for the winning band, as well as musical equipment and recording grants for the musicians who top their categories.
Today The Detail meets a finalist for the solo/duo category, Joshua Engu, and hears the newly released single of last year’s winning band, Equilibrium.
Common says original music in Aoteaora is flourishing among young people and getting signed to a major record label is not the only way to break into the industry.
“I think the access that students have to it now is significantly greater as a result of the access to the technology they have through their phones; how they can market themselves. There are independent performers who have access to international audiences now because of the technology that they have.”
The growing influence of technology has forced the organisers to tweak the rules and look at new ways of staging the regional events, but it has also raised standards to new levels, says Common.
In the “post grunge era” young musicians are increasingly moving to the beat of their own drums.
“Once the internet gave students easy access to whatever music they wanted to listen to, my observation is their listening is much more diverse than it used to be and as a result what they’re performing is more diverse,” he says.
They also know how to use social media to quickly reach international audiences.
Last year’s band category winner, Equilibrium, made history by being the first non-vocal group to take first place. The four-member jazz metal group has just released its first single but saxophone and keyboard player Alex Gibson says it already has 20,000 followers and nearly five million views on social media after posting “bad jazz” videos.
“One day we posted an Instagram reel of us playing jazz together but a semi-tone out. It went up online and did numbers, so we made a whole series of them,” he says.
And their audience is global.
“Some of our biggest follower bases are South Korea and the US.”
A finalist in this year’s solo/duo category, Manurewa High School student Joshua Engu, doesn’t use any traditional instruments and has had to figure out how to fit into Rockquest rules.
“You have to have at least one instrument that you play live. That was hard for me because all my music is on the laptop, it’s all digital.
“I was stuck for a whole month until my teacher came up to me and said, ‘Hey we’ve got turntables in the cabinet, do you want to take them home?'”
On stage, Engu’s turntables have become his live instrument. He says he finds traditional music genres overrated.
“No hates, you know. Pop, rock, RnB, reggae – I love those but I would rather be known for doing something different,” says Engu, who has previously won Rockquest as part of a band and duo. He says his experimental hip hop beats are inspired by US artists Death Grips and Kanye West, and New Zealand’s own Savage. His dream is to be as “big as Michael Jackson”.
Previous Smokefree Rockquest winners include Lorde, Kimbra, and Bic Runga. Key performers who changed the direction of the competition include 1991 winner Julia Deans, who influenced the original-music-only rule; Bic Runga who won multiple times and became the first to get a major recording deal and Anna Coddington, whose Handsome Geoffery band was the first all-female band to win.
“We don’t guarantee them anything,” says Glenn Common. “Winning does not guarantee anything other than a prize pack and a music and video on the day to get you launched. But music isn’t a short-term career. It’s something you’ve got to invest a lot into.”
Common says the competition is constrained by resource and time – it has to fit into six weekends – but he wants more events and more students on stage performing their original music.
“I’ve seen the difference it’s made in young musicians’ lives. To me it’s about keeping that framework there, letting the students do what they do, have their say musically and politically as well.”
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