Chris Lam Sam was born in South Auckland to a couple on the brink of implosion. After the marriage broke down Lam Sam and his mother relocated to Wellington. He gained a stepmother, a half-sister, and – briefly – a stepfather, but the fact he and his mum were a tight unit was clear to those who helped them along their way. While short on money, the house held no shortage of magic.
The radio – tuned to 2ZB – brought Lindsay Yeo’s popular breakfast show, featuring Buzz O’Bumble and his other fantastical friends, into their lives every weekday morning. The theme song is still lodged in Lam Sam’s mind as an early musical influence. Yeo released three children’s variety show albums on vinyl featuring a mix of original and traditional songs, some of which were often found spinning on the family record player.
“This makes Yeo the first independent NZ children’s musician I ever owned the music of,” says Lam Sam, who currently counts 188 children’s music producers in his personal network.
Ten years ago, he entered two years of talks with Lindsay and his wife Jan to bring Buzz O’Bumble and his friends back into the world. The dream did not eventuate, but Lam Sam can now revisit his memories of Buzz and friends at Te Waka Huia o Ngā Taonga Tuku Iho – Wellington Museum, where they have become part of the collection.
His grandmother taped many episodes of ‘Fraggle Rock’ and ‘The Muppet Show’
The television and VHS machine at Broderick Road was constantly playing Jim Henson’s various offerings of the day. Lam Sam’s grandmother would get up early to tape back-to-back episodes of Fraggle Rock and The Muppet Show, amassing a VHS tape catalogue of nearly every episode ever aired. Still hungry for more, the wee Henson fan even went so far as to fake sickness a few times so he could stay home and watch Sesame Street, which aired during school hours.
“The rich musical arrangements and performances from these shows absolutely inspired me to write my own songs in later years, and across a wide range of genres, too,” says Lam Sam. “Those shows taught me that music could be used to entertain and bring joy, but also evoke strong emotions like sadness.”
During the mid-1980s his stepdad took him to a Muppets exhibition, allowing him to witness the magic of the beloved puppets close-up. Some were even brought to life with animatronics.
“That definitely fanned the flame for me wanting to do my own puppet shows,” he says. “That desire peaked after I had built my own puppets in my teen years, and wrote to the Henson company at the age of 16 to see if I could get work with them.”
They replied, inviting him to send a videotaped audition. His lack of experience swayed him against taking the matter any further at the time. Working with the Muppets would have to wait a few years. He might not have had the skills then, but fate was moving him towards meetings with legendary players from the Muppets universe.
In 2018, resplendent in his bespoke Muppets suit, Lam Sam met costume designer and puppet builder Bonnie Erickson (Miss Piggy was just one of her creations), while hosting Behind the Seams, part of the Jim Henson Retrospectacle at Te Papa.
The Retrospectacle also allowed him to meet Arthur Novell, Executive Director of the Jim Henson Legacy, and Dave Goelz (aka Gonzo, among others). When Lam Sam mentioned the letter he’d sent to Henson’s people, he was thrilled to discover Novell knew the person who had replied to him. Lam Sam hit it off so well with Goelz, who was so touched by the former’s heartfelt introduction at the event, he invited him to dinner with a bunch of other Muppet performers.
“It was like a dream come true!” Lam Sam recalls. A dream seeded in the lounge of that little flat in Johnsonville, where the works of literary giants like Doctor Seuss, Roald Dahl, Mercer Mayer, and Roger Hargreaves were also igniting his imagination. Surrounded by the support of wider whānau, he had everything he ever needed, and in his early years was unaware of the impact his mother’s deteriorating health was having on the stability of the little world they shared.
“By the time I was five, the MS was progressing quite rapidly, which meant she was able to do less, and my other family had to step into the gap to help us,” Lam Sam recalls. “I remember my first day at school, and being super-upset as mum’s wheelchair couldn’t get into the classroom, due to the steps in front of the door, so I had to go into the class by myself while she waved outside.
“Her short-term memory kicked in around the time I was eight, so I never really got to know the Carol my grandparents had raised because she couldn’t remember much about her past. She was always proud of me and would come to my school performances when she could, but the future and aspirations weren’t really things she was able to comprehend for us in her last seven years. She passed away from MS complications when I was 14 and I went to live with my grandparents.”
At 18 he sang with Harbour Capital Chorus and joined the Wellington Carnival Street Band
Chris remained with them, in their Newlands home, until he was 18. He joined and remained a member of Harbour Capital Chorus – singing four-part harmony in barbershop style – throughout this time. He also joined the Wellington Carnival Street Band. Fronted by Lam Sam on accordion, they are one of the capital’s most cheerful family musical ensembles.
As the nineties became the 2000s, Lam Sam moved away from Wellington. He completed a Bachelor of Music (Composition) at Waikato University, and in 2003, on the way to obtaining his Graduate Diploma in Teaching (Primary), he co-founded The Funky Monkeys, a professional touring musical supergroup for children.
Lam Sam took a break from teaching to dedicate himself to live performance, playing to an estimated 1.7 million audience members. The Funky Monkeys released four albums – one in collaboration with Plunket NZ – and their music videos played every morning on TV for more than a decade. Beaming from their screens, and bouncing out of their CD players, Lam Sam was becoming all that had inspired him as a child to thousands of other children around the country.
And yet, he still had more to give. Lam Sam was the musical director for the touring Kids For Kids choir shows from 2009 to 2020, reaching a generation of 150,000 tamariki across the motu. He was the keyboardist for popular swing-funk band Late 80’s Mercedes from 2013 to 2018. From 2014 to 2019, he was Chair of The Goodtime Foundation, a charitable trust working to provide free music lessons, instruments, and life skills mentoring to underprivileged school children.
Mr Lam Sam’s Musical Mayhem Show is another production that brought him into the lives of Kiwi kids. Resplendent in tailor-made suits louder than his amp, always sporting the sharpest shoes, he’s as likely to award you a blender as sing you a song, with audience member challenges like “It’s in the Bagpipes”.
In 2017, Lam Sam released his first co-authored children’s book with Kiwi illustrator Angela Keoghan and publisher the TATE Museum in London. Inspector Brunswick: Case Of The Missing Eyebrow won a 2018 Storylines Notable Book Award.
Lam Sam received a $25,000 grant from Creative New Zealand in 2020 to produce his first independent album, Silly Funny Songs For Kids. The album became a finalist for an Aotearoa Music Award – the Recorded Music NZ Te Kaipuoro Waiata Tamariki Toa/Best Children’s Music Artist.
As an active advocate for the Aotearoa children’s music industry, Lam Sam was a founding board member of the Kiwi Kids Music Trust, the charitable arm of Kiwi Kids Music Collective.
In 2022 he won the NZ On Air Best Children’s Music Video Award for his ‘Song About Nothing’ music video, produced by Mukpuddy Animation.
In 2006 Lam Sam met his wife Kate and, “without a word of a lie,” they became engaged on their first date. Kate encouraged him to follow his passions through times when he wondered if it was time to quit the constant side-hustling and take up a regular job. Together, they have three sons who Lam Sam considers one of life’s greatest gifts. He says they have been very inspirational in his years of writing and performing, particularly with The Funky Monkeys.
“Our song ‘The Run Stop’ was a little game I once played with our youngest, Zac. That became our first song to have over one million streams on Spotify,” he says.
“Despite them being older now, my children are still always my first audience”
His kids have all performed in his live shows in some way, often plucked out as tiny plants the audience are amazed to see clamber up onto his shoulders to perform some titular “musical mayhem” stunt.
“Despite them being older now, my children are still always my first audience,” he says. “They will hear any demo before any other child, and they will give me suggestions for improvement. I am grateful I got to feature all of them in my song ‘Questions’, with my eldest being the last voice you will hear in that song, and in turn, the whole album, if you listen from beginning to end.”
Lam Sam already imagines becoming a grandparent will bring a new season of inspiration, if he ever gets to write for the next generation of Lam Sams.
For now, though, he’s relishing the role he considers he has been training his whole life for, as NZSO Animateur. He considers himself extremely fortunate to have been able to combine his learning in composition, his teaching in primary schools, and entertainment experience into one role that requires him to do all those things in partnership with Aotearoa’s national orchestra.
“The role itself is new to the Southern Hemisphere,” he explains, “but has existed in the UK for many years where animateurs like Gareth Malone have gone on to have quite famous TV and arts careers. It will allow me to tour the country sharing music workshops in school classrooms and venues the orchestra can’t always get to. My main job is to inspire life-long relationships with symphonic music and the NZSO in young people and diverse audiences. Part of my role is helping those audiences create their own music which will be very rewarding.”
With dreams as lofty as those that have fuelled him from a young age, Lam Sam concedes he has not hit the levels of stardom he aspired to as a teenager. Having said that, he recognises that some of the families who witness him in action might see him at a far higher place on the fame scale than he sees himself.
Surprisingly, for one with such an illustrious and varied career, he doesn’t consider himself to be particularly driven. He’ll often find himself simply waiting for the next exciting thing to come along, which it always seems to. He credits a lot of his success with simply being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people to make things happen. One thing he has been sure about, which he discovered during his days touring the country with the Y-One Roadshow back in 2000, is that children are the audience he was made for reaching.
“I believe children deserve the best that life has to offer,” he says. “For me, that has always meant not cutting corners when it comes to producing music for them just because they are kids. The entertainers I looked up to in my childhood wrote at the absolute top of their game for young people and families. Their effort made my youth a wonderful-looking and sounding place. Just like them, I try to follow in their footsteps and make high quality music and video content for an international audience like Jim did to ‘make millions of people happy’. I definitely want to leave behind a canon of work that not only I can be proud of, but my children – and their children, too.”
