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https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/dec/30/australia-female-first-nations-indigenous-rappers-rap-hip-hop-music?utm_source=press.coop>
"When the Indigenous hip-hop artist Charmaine Jasmine Armstrong – also known as
Dizzy Doolan – started spitting rhymes 22 years ago she was one of a handful of
women in Australia’s rap scene.
There was no one to teach her how to put songs together, promote herself, apply
for grants or even upload music. In the early 2000s the Australian scene was
dominated by white men – groups like the Hilltop Hoods.
“There was no other female rappers that I knew of really doing their thing,”
Dizzy says. “There was no one to look up to, apart from your American groups.”
Two decades later Dizzy is part of a growing number of Indigenous female
artists across Australia. They are merging the world’s oldest living cultures
with a comparatively new genre of music: rap. They’re also ushering in a new
wave of hip-hop that wrestles with racial politics, Australia’s bloody past and
social injustice.
In far north Queensland, Dizzy, a Takalak, Agwamin, Gureng Gureng and Wokka
Wokka woman, grew up listening to jazz and blues. At 16 she released her first
rap song,
No Shame – a message about not letting that feeling hold you back.
“My mum’s sister passed away, so I was at a very down point,” she says. “When I
discovered songwriting and rap, I was like, ‘Oh, I can put on my pain and
struggle and make it sound cool.’ Turning your pain to power.”
At 18 she recorded her first song on to CDs and would walk the streets of
Brisbane, putting them into letterboxes.
“I was like, ‘How can we get this music out?’ I had no iTunes, there was
nothing like that – we barely had access to the internet.
“But the beauty about hip-hop is you only need a pen and paper. I started with
no beat, just banging on the table.”
As mainstream Australia’s taste for rap developed, so did Dizzy’s career. From
chasing small gigs in Brisbane she went on to support huge international
artists including Fatman Scoop, T-Pain and Akon. Now 38, Dizzy has just
released her first full album.
“I wasn’t valued as much as a male would be in the industry,” she says. “But
then, you use that, you take that and you use that as power, and prove them
wrong.
“Nowadays there’s a big movement of more female artists in the scene, which I’m
so excited to see.”"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
