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Dream Support Gig Comes To Abrupt End

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AC: At what age did your appreciation for rap and hip hop grow?

MW: Ever since I was 15, I’ve been heavily into the scene. My friend and I had our own two hour radio program on SynFM called ‘Livin’ it up with Trae and Sketch’. We would interview artists from around Melbourne as well as play a lot of music. I really researched the many different genres and styles of American and Australian rap. I admired the way they lyrically told a story.

AC: Fast forward from age 15 to now, what’s been happening musically?

MW: A couple of years ago, I started out singing locally in jazz bars and in rapper’s choruses, but it wasn’t till November last year that I put my band together called ‘Madeleine Wood’. I started entering and winning band competitions such as one called ‘Melbourne Fresh’ at Revolver. A few months after that, I was chosen to be the support act for E-V-E on her Australian tour.

AC: That’s huge! Tell me about the E-V-E experience…

MW: I was thrilled the experience came about, but it was actually by chance that I was seen by CDubb from Big Boys Entertainment who was bringing E-V-E out. At the time, I had a few gigs going on so my posters were up all over the place and CDubb’s producer happened to be a student at the place I was working. He said, ‘look, I’ve got a song I’d like you to listen to. I just want to see what you come up with… can you rap in it?’ So I said ‘cool, give it to me’. Then CDubb said, ‘I’m touring with E-V-E and I’d love you to come, cause I want to do this song that you’re in.’ I was like ‘yeah, I’m doing one song, this is great.’ But soon after that I had my single release and he said, ‘I love your single too, why don’t you come down and do a couple of your originals as well.’ So things just started to get better as it went along.

AC: Sounds like a dream come true. Tell me about the tour…

MW: Before I knew it we were off to Adelaide, but I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would’ve liked with E-V-E because the tour was cancelled. I only did one show in Adelaide. Touring through five major cities was the plan.

AC: That’s devastating! What happened?

MW: They didn’t say, but it was definitely due to ticket sales (99% sure). So it was kind of really annoying to have that experience taken away from me.

AC: Sounds like events unfolded which were out of your control. But did you take away some positive experience?

MW: I did get to hang out and speak with E-V-E about music. I wasn’t star struck by her, but hanging around with an international artist, seeing her get in the zone - it was just amazing to watch and be a part of.

AC: Tell me a bit about your own music…

MW: I’ve created my own style of hip hop pop music. I gravitated toward this style because the root of hip hop music is all about oppression but my background isn’t about oppression at all. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t create some good hip hop influenced music, so I created my own style. It’s a lot more musical than rap. It’s related to blues and the popular music styles as well, so I’ve used that as a base to push myself forward in a direction that I think will get me further.

AC: So, would you consider yourself to be forging a new path, or are there others out there that are doing the same thing?

MW: Well, I noticed another girl who also toured with E-V-E called CC Martini, but she called it ‘pip pop’ because she does like pop rock hip hop. So, I put myself in the same basket as her, but yeah, I would say that I have created my own kinda pathway.

AC: How original are your songs?

MW: I write all my own songs - from the beats, to the piano to the violins - absolutely everything. I do that by using a computer program called Cubase. Then I give the songs to my producer and we sit down, normally for a 10-hour session, and we re-write the whole thing note for note pretty much using his expensive studio equipment. In saying that though, there are two songs on the EP With Conviction that are co-writes, where he’s written most of the beats and instrumentation and then given it to me to do all the lyrics and melodies.

Madeliene Wood’s debut EP, With Conviction is due for release in August and will be available through itunes, JB HiFi, independent stores and at all her gigs. Also keep an eye out for her soon-to-be-released video clip that will air on Rage, Sin TV and Channel 31.

Check out Madeleine’s music on www.myspace.com/madeleinewood or catch her live at The Palace (Camberwell) Wednesday 18 June and August 6.

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PROTEST SONGS FOR THE FEARLESS

SONiA’s songs cover much of the expected ground for a protest singer – the Iraq war, gay marriage, racism. However, she is unusual in more than just the fact that her latest album, Tango, has less English than Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic. A feature of SONiA’s work, and philosophy, is the lack of finger-pointing. She’s out to fix the world, but not to apportion blame for the mess. The name of her band is no coincidence. Her enemy is people’s fear, rather than evil individuals.

This approach has taken her surprising places for such a political artist. In 2006 SONiA was one of eight musicians selected to take part in a remarkable dual promotion. Jeep had eight of their vehicles outfitted with super-powerful speakers and hiked up batteries and lent them to independent artists to tour stretches of the United States.

SONiA admits to being surprised to have received an offer, let alone first choice as to the portion of America to cover. “I was the only woman in the group, probably the only Jew, certainly the only gay,” she says. “I sang my songs. I mean this is part of Chrysler, but they made no attempt to interfere with what I sang.”

The unusual opportunity was a gift for an artist used to struggling for airplay. Crowds flocking past stopped to listen, buy CDs and sign up for her mailing list. Perhaps even more than appearing on a compilation CD with U2, the unusual sponsorship exposed SONiA to an audience she might otherwise never reach.

Such opportunities would be worthless however, if her music didn’t offer something that could appeal to passers-by, and reach them quickly. SONiA thinks that people “heard something real” in her voice. The catchy upbeat tunes on most of her songs also no doubt helped. Perhaps more importantly, for all her radicalism, SONiA is a uniter not a divider.

This is most clearly visible in her song Me, Too, which in the space of four minutes and forty-five seconds manages to reclaim American patriotism from bigotry, as sharply as Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land reclaimed love of country from the plutocracy. After first appearing on an album of the same name, Me, Too has been included on a fundraiser for the Gay and Lesbian rights group The Human Rights Campaign, along with songs by Queen, kd lang and Ani DiFranco, and won her a host of awards from the queer community. It was also selected for the 40th Anniversary CD of the Philadelphia Folk Festival.

While it lacks the infectious sing-along quality of Guthrie’s classic, SONiA’s gentle and understated tune slips under the most hostile guard. Where Guthrie’s guitar famously read “This machine kills fascists” SONiA breathes pacifism, battling only the emotions that drive their behaviour.

The song tells the story of the relationship between a Vietnam Veteran and his daughter who grows up to protest the war machine and “fall in love with the girl next door”. Early on the father tells her, “I stood up for what I believed in and I want you to do the same.”
The ambiguity over whether this involves her standing up for his beliefs or her own is resolved in deeply moving fashion. Me, Too places respect for differing opinions as part of an American tradition, in defiance of anything to be heard on Fox.

Similarly, SONiA’s other masterpiece No Bomb is Smart contains a checklist of issues from the undermining of public transport to Florida 2000 and Nuclear Waste dumps, with the shadow of the Iraq war unspoken in the background. Yet despite SONiA’s determination to “Not watch this silently in pain” she assures us “It’s not about Good Guys, Not about Bad Guys …But if I am me and you are we and we’re all living in democracy then its hypocrisy to keep pushing us apart.”

Such an approach is easily labelled hopelessly naive, and SONiA’s dreadlocks and gawky stage presence feed this perception all too easily. Yet it is striking how reminiscent SONiA’s approach is to the one that has taken Barak Obama to the status of a leading contender for the presidency. SONiA jokes that she should change the name of the song to “Obama’s Smart”, although her preferred candidate for President was the more radical Dennis Kucinich.

And criticism of SONiA for armchair activism, or offering simplistic nostrums from a safe distance was defused when she spent weeks performing in Israeli bomb shelters, while Hezbollah rained armaments around her. Then she went to the West Bank to give equal time to the victims on the other side.

SONiA is also invulnerable to the charges of hypocrisy often levelled at preaching artists. Many of her songs are available for download from her site www.disappearfear.com and 18% of the $1.49 download charge goes to the United Nations World Food Program (The figure of 18% comes from Chai, the Hebrew symbol for life, with an alphanumeric value of 18. Jewish donations to charities are commonly made in multiples of 18 in consequence.) The UN estimates it costs 19 cents to provide a meal in the developing world, so the slogan “One song, one child, one meal” on SONiA’s website is actually understating what she offers by almost 50%. She also sells charitable merchandise along with her CDs and fundraises to provide musical instruments to children in war-torn countries.

“What I’d really like, and maybe I should be doing this by petition, is getting Steve Jobs to donate 18% of every download on Itunes to the World Food Program, because if we did that there would be no more hunger in the world,” SONiA says. The maths of the statement don’t quite stack up, but an hour spent at a Disappear Fear concert leaves one convinced that the solutions to the world’s worst problems are closer than you thought, as well as providing a cheerful soundtrack for the celebration party.

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