By Karen Fredericks
The first National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Music Festival, With Open Eyes, will be held in Sydney from November 30 to December 5. The festival comes at a time when Yothu Yindi, Kev Carmody and other male Aboriginal artists are finally being signed to major labels and finding their audience, but Aboriginal women artists still work in relative obscurity.
Organisers Lola Forrester and Vicki Gordon say the festival will open the eyes of the music industry and audiences to the talent and accomplishments of Aboriginal and Islander women musicians. They emphasise that it is also designed to open the women's eyes to their own achievements and potential, and to promote the confidence needed to explore all options for a career in music.
"Creativity doesn't emerge of its own volition", says Vicki Gordon. "It has to be nurtured. Creativity, in my experience, is born out of a supportive environment; it is not born when people are saying 'You'll never succeed, you'll never be any good at what you do'.
"Women generally have a lot of trouble with self-esteem. Aboriginal women have the same issues, and in some ways it's probably even harder. But, at least with the festival they are thrown into a supportive environment, and that's the most important thing."
The festival program includes workshops in songwriting, voice, music video, rapping, sound and lighting production, music business, artist management, publicity and promotion and marketing. The skills that will be covered, Forrester and Gordon explain, have been chosen to assist women to gain more creative control over their own musical projects. In a male-dominated industry, they say, it is vital that women master the technical and business skills.
With Open Eyes was initiated by Australian Women's Contemporary
Music (AWCM), a group of women who lobby government and industry and provide training and support to women working in the music industry. AWCM was set up in 1989 by its current artistic director, Vicki Gordon. Lindy Morrison, (ex Go-Betweens, now Cleopatra Wong) is AWCM's vice president, and Helen Carter (ex Do Re Mi) is secretary.
Gordon says the organisation has become somewhat of a "conscience" for the industry, constantly pushing to redress the continuing gender imbalance.
Gordon successfully applied to the Aboriginal Arts Unit for funds to stage With Open Eyes. Lola Forrester, with her experience in Australia's first Aboriginal fashion modelling agency, and recently in television and radio, was hired to head the project.
Forrester's own mother was a singer who performed on radio, and she feels strongly that there are a large number of talented and accomplished Aboriginal women who just aren't given the opportunity to
Forrester has long been involved in the facilitation of positive images of Aboriginal people, a job she sees as her contribution to the political struggle of Aboriginal people. She says she feels the festival is a perfect method to continue this work. It draws on Aboriginal culture, she says, by bringing people together face to face, to learn together and help each other to succeed, rather than the competitive, cutthroat approach so rampant in the entertainment industry.
Gordon says she is certain the festival will be an enormous success, despite a widespread perception that there are no Aboriginal or TI women in music. Back in 1989, when she was organising Fast Forward, the first Australian all-woman rock band festival, everyone told her there were no Australian all-woman bands.
"We found 15 nationally, and God knows how many more there were!", she says.
"Even as little as eight years ago, the options for women in the music industry were really minimal. Either you were a lead singer fronting an all-male band, or you were standing at the back shaking a tambourine or hitting a triangle. What's really important is that women should be given the option to work in other areas of the industry, like the business or technical side, or even the management side. The festival is designed to open people's eyes to the options. It is part of the fight against stereotypical roles for men and women."
The final night of the festival, Saturday, December 5, there will be a concert at the Marquee Nightclub in Camperdown, starting in the mid-afternoon and continuing to the early hours of Sunday morning. The program will be packed with Aboriginal women performers, from rock and rap to country. Vicki Gordon expects industry representatives to turn out in force.
"The whole focus of this festival is very mainstream. The women will be thrown right into the thick of it on that level. I think there will be a lot of interest from record companies."
All places in the workshops are already taken — by women coming from as far away as Broome, Thursday Island, Perth and Darwin, as well as Sydney artists and aspiring artists.