Big Sound 2017 Wrap-Up
As winners of the 2017 Oxjam Gig Makers Award we got flown up to our home town of Brisbane for Big Sound 2017. The following is the wrap-up article we wrote for Oxjam. It was an epic week and though we had a total blast running around, listening to fresh live music and meeting some great people, we also learned a lot about the Australian music industry that has left us with more questions than answers...
Rolling across the Story Bridge under the picture-book skies of Brisbane we were both thinking the same thing - “How lucky are we??” No way would we have ever thought that putting on an OXJAM gig this year would have resulted in us getting the chance to attend BIGSOUND 2017! And attend we did, living and breathing BIGSOUND for four whole days - darting between industry talks, networking events and masterclasses by day and rocking it at any number of live music venues by night!
We took our fill of industry workshops ranging across topics such as digital media trends and gender and diversity in music, to masterclasses on band finances and music synchronisation. There were also key note addresses and conversations with incredibly high-profile industry names such as Tina Arena, Archie Roach, Mary Ramos (Quentin Tarantino’s Music Supervisor), Alison Wenham (CEO of the Worldwide Independent Network) and rock legend Simon Napier-Bell (music manager, author and journalist). If that wasn’t enough we continued on into the evenings, flitting from party to party and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bernard Fanning whilst trying to fill our ears with as much live music as possible!
But it wasn’t all sunshine and great tunes. Many events and discussions were unable to escape the clouds lingering above the sustainability of many avenues of the music industry. Talks regularly fretted over an ever-changing landscape in which many aspiring artists are required to accept the pittance which tax-dodging multinational digital content providers pay, and then have to fight to maintain relevance with an increasingly apathetic audience that can be quite happy to shell out 10 bucks for a smoothie but then baulk at paying small change for the blood sweat and tears that creates music.
Particularly sobering was the keynote address from Australian music great Tina Arena who called out commercial radio stations for not supporting Australian music enough. We learnt of the overwhelming levels of non-compliance by Australian commercial radio stations failing to meet the 25% local content requirements of their broadcasting licences (with many playing as little as 8%!) and that the slim chance that already existed for local artists to get traction is therefore even slimmer and will continue to be so as long as it is tolerated by the general public that powerful media interests can manipulate the rules of the game in their favour.
These issues form part of the broader fabric of injustice and corruption in our world for which there will remain an ongoing need for like-minded individuals to rally behind social causes, like those Oxfam work on. It is for reasons such as these that we were more than happy to donate our time and efforts to jam for Oxfam Australia and raise funds to fight poverty and inequality.
So, despite all the big names, the big parties, the big talks, and the big opportunities to network with music bigwigs, the best part by far of BIGSOUND for us was the opportunity to broaden our own music community by meeting like-minded singers and songwriters, crazy guitarists and wild drummers, kooky visual artists, music nerds and passionate volunteers. In these circles, you can still discover people just looking to create and connect with each other and we will be forever grateful for being given the opportunity to do just that. Thanks for the trip of a lifetime to Oxfam Australia, let’s keep making those gigs for good!