WITH a musical Samoan father and a watchful Polish mother, Koebi Faumui and his siblings were destined to be musicians.

Not necessarily for a day job, because although all were trained in music, big sister Kashia took environmental studies in business management and older brother Salale is doing a psychology degree. 

But 20-year-old Koebi, now in his second year studying jazz guitar with Greg Stott and music production with Ken Lampl at the ANU School of Music, is well and truly on his way to becoming a professional musician. 

Only eight when he started recording with his siblings The Faumuis, he has already recorded 10 original albums and five covers. 

Father and manager Garry Faumui, manager of the Booyah Group, which uses music to strengthen social bonds, says his aim has been to pass on to his children “enduring stuff”, while their mother has been “the critic… she tells us when we suck”.

Koebi, Garry says, is the only one of his musical children who expressed an interest in stepping out on his own. 

When I catch up with him, he’s brimming with excitement about the musical colleagues he’s been able to assemble for his new EP launch at ANU Kambri in early December, including Citizen Kay, Lucy Sugarman, Seanzsound, and members of the group Archie. “These are people whose music I respect,” he says. “It’s my dream.”

His new EP, called “Something New”, is a culmination of originals written over the past year, but he’s released a couple of teaser singles in recent months – “Good People”, a song with a universal message and “I Know Better”, which “felt like it encompassed my life in the last couple of years”. 

“I wouldn’t like to get stuck in one category, but maybe what I do is pop indie,” he says.

His efforts to make a quieter departure from the kind of sound he used to do, he suspects, may be attributed to his studies with “awesome teachers” Greg Stott, Eric Ajaye and John Mackey. 

“Being at university has helped me develop some vocabulary, and also some maturity. I feel I know a lot about jazz now,” he says. 

Koebi’s musical inclination is quite eclectic, as the line-up of rock, rap, hip-hop, folk, electronic and reggae on December 3 will show. 

He has produced and helped write a song about mental health with eight local rappers and produced a track with a group of indigenous year 5 students.

“The songs that mean the most to me are the ones where I go deep, but the funny thing is that they often come easily,” he says.

“They can come in 30 minutes.

“I want to get some more meaning into my lyrics, to question things, to be quite reflective.”

He suspects that his Seventh-day Adventist upbringing may have had some influence, both in the content of his songs, but also the discipline he discovered in his childhood. 

“You have a great deal of self-control when you know you’re not like the rest of the people,” he says. 

“I am thankful for my days in church; that upbringing gives you hope to sing and hope to play better.”

“Something New”, ANU Kambri, 7pm, December 3.