The Unconventional Wedding

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A child of the 70s, the 32 year-old Wedding grew up listening to mainstream pop singers like Barbara Streisand and Barry Manilow. She didn't discover her performing genre of jazz until she went to high school.

"I sang songs with my Dad before I could speak," said Wedding. "My family loves music. My brother plays the trumpet and sings, my sister sings a little, my Dad plays the guitar and sings in the church choir and my Mum loves music but bless her, can't hold a tune.".

Recognising her talent and passion for music, her parents enrolled her in private singing lessons from the age of seven (which Wedding concedes is pretty young to start vocal training). Here, she learned the discipline enforced by a classical technique and began singing Italian arias. She also has to perform two recitals a year to audiences, which helped her to get over her stage fright.

"I don't handle nerves the way other people do," says Wedding.

She wrote her first song, a tribute to her grandmother called "Memories of Grandma Spark My Imagination", at eight years of age, performing it to her own piano accompaniment at a music recital and winning the blue ribbon.

"It felt good," says Wedding.

But it wasn't until she walked into a rehearsal at the music school her parents enrolled her in at Dallas, Texas, that she discovered jazz.

"I'd never heard anything like it." says Wedding. "I walked in and said 'Wow, that's what I want to do'".

At the same music school she met her mentor, Dave Alexander, who she credits in her first solo album, The Secret.

Alexander, an accomplished trumpeter, bassist and singer, got Wedding excited about jazz. It was a feisty relationship. Wedding had her own ideas about the sounds she wanted to create but concedes she learned from Alexander's honesty. Now, a teacher herself, she believes finding the right mentor can be critical in an artist's development.

"As a teacher, I realise what you say and how you say it is really important - you can really affect your student's life," says Wedding. "While always being honest with my students, I try to find something good to say."

Studying under Alexander, Wedding was exposed to some unconventional teaching styles that still influence her performances. She was placed in small ensembles with horn players and expected to perform like one. Listen to her scat, and you'll hear a trumpet, a trombone or a French horn.

"I wanted to be like an instrumentalist and to be able to improvise," says Wedding.

Alison Wedding immigrated from the States to Australia in 2001 and for the first time, found artistic freedom.

"I'd been living in Los Angeles but I feel stifled. In the States, musicians are put in boxes as pop singers, country singers or jazz singers. I found the Australian audience far more accepting of non-traditional jazz," said Wedding.

So much so she is converting non-jazz listeners into enthusiasts. She regularly has audience members at her gigs approach her afterwards and say they 'never enjoyed jazz until tonight'.

Speaking to the audience is something Wedding is passionate about. Her vulnerability, combined with her American forwardness, makes for a seductive stage-presence. Her song Too Too Tight, about her own obsession with weight, is dedicated to all women who think they're too fat. She concedes that being a lead singer puts her in the spotlight and makes her very self-conscious about her appearance.

While Australia has given her artistic license to create her own music, she finds the audiences less generous than in America.

"In America, if you like something you show your appreciation," says Wedding. "Australian audiences are far more conservative. I try to hold onto that part of being an American."

One thing she shares with her fellow Australian musicians is the struggle to make a living from her art. She believes the average fee a musician can earn from a live gig is becoming less and less, which leaves her feeling unappreciated.

"The public don't acknowledge the contribution music and musicians make to society. Every time you turn on the TV, there's music. Sitting in a café, there's music. Musicians have the power to evoke a mood but don't get paid well enough for that," says Wedding.

She has, however, been recognised in other ways. In 2004, she won the Bell Award for the Best Vocal Jazz Album for The Secret, beating Vince Jones and Michelle Nicole for the title.

She has also found love in Australia with her pianist, Sam Keevers, who she describes as a 'sensitive musician'. Married 14 months ago, they share a house in Thornbury with their two dogs, Barney a 14-month-old Maltese Terrier and Ella, a 12-year-old Border Collie. Wedding says working with her husband has never presented a problem. As one who likes to improvise, she needs to be able to trust her musicians, and her intimate relationship with her husband only supports that.

Her second solo album is due to be released later this year. Having recorded it, she is deliberating over who she will sign with to release her work. She is hesitant to bite the hand that feeds but feels frustrated with the lack of opportunity for artists with original material.

"All I want is the chance to be heard. I know I won't please everyone and it's very liberating to finally acknowledge that. The new album contains a huge variety - I want to show my range," says Wedding.

What next for Alison Wedding?

"I'm heading back to the States in the middle of the year to see my family. I would like to meet with some record companies but we'll see. I'll keep doing my regular gigs at Bennett's Lane and I'm doing the Winter Music Series at Glen Eira on 14 August," says Wedding.

Further details on Alison Wedding can be found at www.alisonwedding.com. Her CD The Secret is available through ABC shops, Readings, Borders and JB Hi-Fi.

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Lehrer takes sting out of Seeger's brag

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A singer might be passionate about changing the world, but if she holds that world in contempt, her music is doomed.

Sermons have always been readily available through synagogues, churches and mosques. But when paying to be entertained, you don't want to be told you stink. This is precisely the message that the protest music movement has conspired to transmit to Western society at large since the 1960s.

Seeger, though, still has his admirers. In a televisual equivalent of the 88-string guitar, ABC TV's Get Up, Stand Up recently idolised him at length. Forget the cries of santo subito at Pope John Paul's funeral. Get Up Stand Up was instant canonisation for Seeger.

Pete Seeger preaches to the converted

The series played songs by Seeger and other leading protest figures, some of whom were German or French and singing in their native tongues. It is difficult to see why an ABC show needed songs in another language. Perhaps it was to reinforce the elitist character of protest music. If this was its purpose, it was extremely unnecessary. Protest music has always signalled its own elitism clearly, without needing to lapse into continental lingo.

The great Billy Bragg is an example. I say "great" because Bragg is a terrific user of words, conveying strong emotion. But usually, only to a limited audience. If you wonder why Bragg has few top 10 hits, just consider The World Turned Upside Down. This song advocates Communism. Not by directly appealing to a Stalin or Pol Pot to come and wipe out the peasants, but even more obscurely, by relating a story from 1649 when a sect called "the Diggers" overthrew the property laws of England and were, not surprisingly, crushed.

 

Bragg honours flag?

History is full of such cruel and stupid tales. Whatever their individual lessons, they seldom make rousing popular songs, even among the converted.

"The sin of property we do disdain," sings Bragg "No man has the right to buy and sell the earth for private gain". This is a clear demonstration of protest music disappearing up its own fundament. If property is theft, how can Bragg justify record sales?

Fortunately for Billy Bragg, sales are not such a major moral issue as they must be for Sting. Sting is the single successful exemplar of protest music in history.

Even at his most political - in the anti-nuclear song Russians, for example - he achieves what the folk song army wants to, but can't: a mass audience.

The song's central declaration - "I hope the Russians love their children too" - begs a dozen questions about the politics of international conflict. Most politicians have motivations distinct from their families' interests. Osama bin Laden may well be attached to his offspring. But it doesn't mean you can do business with him. Besides, Reagan's Star Wars, more than Sting's Russians, probably brought down the Berlin Wall. But you can't hum Reagan's Star Wars speech, nearly as well.

Music - an art - has the power to change what is inside our heads. Not as effectively as today's leading art-form, cinema, but powerfully just the same. The key to successful change is mastering what Sting has mastered: the art of music. I don't share Sting's politics, but I know he knows his way around an instrument. You can hear it.

And he also knows his way around words. Just hear the rhymes in Russians: precedent-President, boy-toy, sense-fence, biology-ideology. These are intellectually trite, but rhetorically brilliant.

"We share the same biology, regardless of ideology." Again, so what? We share the same biology as the Nazis, but it doesn't make our daily actions the same as theirs.

This point is registered too late, however. By working on our senses as only a musician can, Sting has already changed our thinking about superpower relationships, reducing them to a matter of loving children. Song, in Sting's clammy hands, has become a medium of political transformation. He has made entertainment political, while keeping it entertaining.

Sting has shown it is possible to sing to the rest of us squares. Most protest musicians, by contrast, continue singing to their friends.

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