Jacinta Parsons
Production, editing and transcription by Chelsea Wilson
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
music, radio, women, realise, age, stations, thought, people, local, book, creating, calls, cds, real, part, important, played, world, audience, feel
TRANSCRIPT
Hi and welcome to Control, the podcast where we speak to game changers and change makers in the music and creative industries. In this episode I’m speaking to broadcaster, writer, speaker and author, Jacinta Parsons.
A much loved broadcaster and author based in Melbourne Jacinta currently hosts Afternoons on ABC 774, delivering a mix of art, culture and ideas. Prior to afternoons Jacinta presented Melbourne 774 Breakfast and the Friday Revue and also worked behind the scenes as Music Director for Double j and the ABC Local radio network. She has released two books, her memoir Unseen: The secret life of chronic illness and her new book ‘ a question of age’.. She is an ambassador for the Crohn’s and Colitis Association of Australia and is a board director of Melbourne disability theatre company, Rollercoaster.
In this conversation I ask Jacinta about ageism in the music industry, her career in broadcasting, her writing process, the time that Kylie Minogue called her on live radio, and much much more. This episode has a language warning if you have little ones around.
This is Jacinta Parsons, in Control.
Chelsea
Jacinta Parsons, welcome to the control podcast. Great to see you.
Jacinta
Well, I can see you as well. But we can only be heard in this other dimension.
Chelsea
(laughs) Yes. I'm really excited to chat to you about “A Question of Age” your new book. But if we can, I'd firstly like to go back a wee bit in your career, as someone who also kicked off in the independent radio sector, I'd love to chat to you about your time at triple R. You've produced and presented ‘local and or general’ before moving on to co-presenting breakfasters, can you tell us how you got started in radio, and what led you to triple R
Jacinta
this is kind of my favorite story in a way because it is very much about that kind of ground up, how you go about kind of accessing where you want to be. So I was actually studying to be a teacher.
Chelsea
Oh, wow.
Jacinta
I know. I know. And I was, you know, pretty serious about it. I love teaching. And I think teaching is like a beautiful profession. But it wasn't the right fit for me. But I was still doing it, you know. And as a child, I had loved radio and had made radio shows, you know, by myself in my bedroom, it was one of those things that I was really into. And I was part of Triple R as a teenager, I would go in there, I didn't know anyone, I would just go in there and do phones for Keely Smith on a Wednesday and for radiothon. But it actually took this life event, I became really unwell with Crohn's disease. And as a result, I had to kind of cease everything I was doing. So my life completely collapsed for a number of years, I had a colostomy bag, I was really, really, really sick. And so that afforded me this beautiful opportunity to say to myself, alright, your whole life is decimated. What would you really want in the world? And so I thought, I realised when I was sick, that everything isn't a big thing. Everything is just tiny, tiny little steps that you do with a great amount of love. That sounds really dorky, but it was a real revelation that you're not waiting to get somewhere else. You're really enjoying the steps that you take to be somewhere. And so you didn't know I was going to give you this rambling answer Chelsea but it's really important kind of foundation for I feel like who I am. And so I was working at the rooftop cafe in Fitzroy, while I was sick, you know, doing all sorts of stuff. And one of my friends was offered an opportunity when Triple R just moved to Brunswick to come and learn the panel to do some emergency graveyards. And so it was just this beautiful timing for me being a huge fan of the station, then getting this random opportunity to go and learn the panel, to be thrown immediately into graveyards. And I can just remember that first moment of sitting behind that radio panel and creating a show. And just knew that I had found the thing that I really loved doing. And so then it was just a really long but wonderful process of saying yes to every opportunity I had, even if it was frightening. And step by step, those little steps really enjoying every aspect of kind of building radio craft.
Chelsea Wilson
what do you think your biggest learnings were from that time working in independent radio,
Jacinta
It's such a beautiful, and you would know this very well, the intersection of community and art. It's complex. And it doesn't always succeed. Because there are so many stakeholders and feelings and emotions. But at its very core, it is the point of art and music, isn't it? That relationship that's very grounded, it's very grassroots, that's very connected, that attracts people who love doing the work for the work, because the work generates its own kind of good stuff. So I think I really learned and it probably just keyed into my already deep sense of access, you know, that community requires and needs access, that's beneficial for everyone. And that when we kind of find ways to provide access and work together, and again, this sounds cheesy, but it's really true. Just the immense kind of joy out of that. The the what that means? Yeah, I think community radio was absolutely that for me. And also then just the skills I learned. I was the live to wear coordinator for a long time, worked in the music department with Simon Winkler for quite a bit of time as well. Just learning and going to community broadcaster conferences, you know, learning the culture of that world, but at its very heart, why is it there? What is the purpose of it? Yeah, really resonated with me.
Chelsea
Yeah, the passion that independent broadcasters Have for community and also for music, I found really incredible and eye opening. And especially as a musician, it's completely different talking to people who have this obsession with music, but in a completely different way than musicians do. And their music knowledge is just incredible. Speaking of music knowledge, where did your music knowledge come from, you know, to present a show like local annual general. And then moving to the breakfast spot. How did you develop that sensibility?
Jacinta
I think I've always been a huge music fan. And I think that's, I love that as an aspect of the kind of union of what music is, you know, there's the makers, there's the lovers, there's the facilitators, so that the makers and the lovers can get together, you know, so that's where radio comes into it all. But I'm a huge lover of music, it's just, you know, there's so many of us that find ourselves with music. So I was just a big music goer, and really loved local music especially. And an opportunity came up for the show. And so I actually just also in the same kind of way, back in the day, when we would have pigeon holes, jam packed full of CDs, possibly 100 plus CDs would come to Local and or General.
Chelsea
All the CDS!
Jacinta
I would listen to every single one of them. I built this system of a listening database that kind of gave reflections and kind of notes about it so that I could return but also collating so that I could choose stuff to play. But just real reverence to the maker. You know, I think that's really one of the parts of it, too, that I've learned from community radio. And again, it's innate, but just what a great role there is in honoring the work that the artist makes, you know, making sure it's listened to, with the ears that you would wish someone would listen to it with. Not always liking it, not always thinking it's very good. But actually just giving a bit of respect to it. I think that stayed with me for my whole career is that not listen to everything, but just give everything it's honour.
Chelsea
Yeah, I think that's brilliant. I always felt like that at PBS when I was the music manager there, you know, there was holding on to all these hopes and dreams that were sent. You know,
Jacinta
It's so stressful.
Chelsea And I adopted a system of broadcasters being able to return CDs that they weren't going to use, because I really wanted to minimize the wastage. So I set up these return sort of tubs. And then I could recycle those CDs onto other shows, you know, graveyard shows or other programs maybe to give to give this artists a second go, and sometimes a third go. And so we had this colour coded sticker system on the CD. So sometimes you'd see that this thing had been recycled like six times, nobody wants it. And that was one of the saddest, saddest moments, but I had one broadcaster, she didn't have a database system. They just wrote on post, it notes what they thought, and she only would clear out her CDs and bring the CDs back once every six months or so because she didn't have a car. So she said, I can't bring them in weekly, I'll just bring them in. So once every six months, she'd bring in these wine boxes filled with CDs, you know, that she had for a year and these post it notes like about you know why there was always a reason why she hadn't played it.
Jacinta
What a beautiful thing
Chelsea
Those kinds of characters you you don't forget. So moving across to ABC, you took up the helm, As music director for Double J and ABC local radio. Can you tell us about this role, and how you approached creating playlists across the different ABC stations?
Jacinta
Yeah, it's was a really different mindset than community radio. But the fundamentals are also the same, the kind of interest in supporting music, which was really eye opening to me, because I had only heard of Double J. You know what I mean? I listened to it growing up, but it wasn't something. You know, in community radio, you're very much in that idea. And then there's Double J over there
Chelsea
for you didn't have time to listen to other stations. You're listening to 130 CDs a week? No, but also this,
Jacinta
No but also this idea that Triple J was the other! No, like, you know, not, you know, the evil overlord I’m not going to say that, but there is a real sense of it, because it has a smaller pool of people choosing the music that it has some kind of thing, which I was really incredibly impressed to have shown to me how wrong that was. So I went in there and the role I had was to make sure that right across Australia, we were playing Australian music, we were having support for that. We're also giving audiences nostalgia, because older audiences respond deeply so that as we all do, making sure that we were changing the diversity of music and the equity of access to music, you know, looking across the multiple spectrums that we think about that in. So it's just a very organised way to go about doing that really, very few ads for local radio. Really, yeah, I can't really remember, it's more than, say Double J would do. It's more than, you know, your X amount of songs. And I would slip stuff in and you know, have some fun playing around with it. And then I would go on to radio stations right around the country, and spruik local music really telling, you know, talking about it, giving it a story, trying to find homes for it right across, because whilst we have, I don't know how many stations 60 odd or more local independent stations, you know, I sort of thought of it as a gosh, we're a really powerful network. So if I can convince them to get on with this music that I am programming for them to play, and to have tell stories about and to get those artists on, it was an incredible opportunity to kind of further the work that I'd been doing at Triple R.
Chelsea
And were you set some kind of brief, or, you know, was there specific targets in terms of trying to respond to certain sounds or aesthetics that fit with different stations or different time slots?
Jacinta
Yeah, so everything set up into day parts. So everything is seen as a breakfast slot, or lunchtime slot ad evening slot, you know, drive slot a morning slot. So all those sorts of ideas are very important to understand how music is programmed in that time, whether we're, you know, tempo, beats, types of music. What was really important at this stage is because we are looking at a really mainstream audience, ultimately, right across the country, although they're possibly more progressive than some stations, the ABC audience is broad, mainstream. And so that took me a little while to get my head across, because I was like, yeah, but push them. But realising that actually, the only way to win this was to ensure that you introduce music in a way that was familiar. So you know, you would introduce new soul, you would introduce new folk and new country and whatever else we would do, alongside some of the stuff that they knew. So it wasn't completely foreign to their ears. And then slowly but surely, we started to kind of challenge it a little bit. It's what I do now on the radio, as well as just see how far you can push the sounds that you create, and the way that you teach an audience and I'm, you know, I know it's a PBS thing as well. It's like you, you challenge an audience by giving them what they want, you know, what's that, that Vince Peaches you know, very famous ‘one that they want, one that they should have, and one you know that they will love’. So it's that kind of idea of trying to encourage broader listening, adventurous listening without losing them because they feel like they're out of their safety net.
Chelsea
Australian content quotas is an ongoing conversation in the music and media industries. We know through reports such as Chrissie Vincent’s research work that commercial radio isn't broadcasting the required amount of local music that they're meant to be. But ABC Radio, specifically double and triple j are often punching above their weight in terms of representing the local scene. However, it's still just really hard for Australian artists to break through into that mainstream consciousness. We know that repetition really helps build familiarity. And that's the thing that's often lacking with independent stations. What are your thoughts around content quotas in radio and how media can support local music?
Jacinta
Oh, yeah, it's absolutely essential. I mean, it should be the governing principle for music stations. And we know obviously, that's not commercial agendas are often governing those choices. But when it comes to government, radio and community radio, supporting and enhancing your local cultural spectrum is obviously so important. And it's exciting. I mean, I see, you know, when I see the work say that Unearthed it is doing and constantly still does, and I see the people behind that, and I see all those people listening to the music, every single piece of music that comes in and the way that they have created a very diplomatic environment for play, I see great benefit in that. But I think there is huge issue around the amount of airtime. I think local radio is the same. We were always you know, and I was always instructed to punch above our weight. You know, we only have to do this much but why would we? Let's go to, I think sometimes I was at 50%, local music, which is well above the requirement at the time, not sure where it is now. But that's the interest to do that it's so wonderful to be supporting local music that feeds the audience and the culture that sits around it. But I see the enormous amount of music, and, you know, you just mentioned it before that horrific, you know, experience of the extent of how much music there is and how much we can actually successfully support. That's the other thing, you can have a couple of spins, but you're 100%, right, to really penetrate, and to really get some traction, you need more than a couple of spins. So I think it's complex, but I think that the will has to be there. I think we're missing it on television, I think we're missing it, in that commercial space, desperately, as much as anywhere. And from the inside, I saw a government organisation really putting in smart and serious work around that representation. But it's very complex.
Chelsea
I just find it really fascinating and interesting that the commercial radio sector feels that they don't want to support Australian music more. And there's such a huge disconnect between the commercial radio sector and the music industry although the main content that they broadcast is music.
Jacinta
They wait to see, you know, Triple J for them is their test case. So if things go well there, then they'll pick it up, likely. But I think with that commercial imperative, there's such fear and I think that's an absolute misstep. You know, that's not, we're creating audiences. And I think what community radio has done for it’s whole time is actually create a culture where we are adventurous listeners, you can only create that through exposure and through the ways that, you know, we encourage and support new listening, that's part of it, too, is actually pushing. Because I work in lots of older age groups. How do we ensure that we're constantly challenging and creating beautiful culture for those groups rather than just accepting pure nostalgia? And it's really hard.
Chelsea
Yeah, but it's no kind of coincidence is it that someone like Ed Sheeran will sell out, you know, 10, Rod Laver arenas, and they're the highest selling, played artist on commercial radio, you know, I just often think if we give 10% of the Ed Sheeran time to some other people, maybe they'll sell out the Corner, you know, like it has a direct economic effect. You know, building that familiarity with local artists. And I think too, if they've got their established audience, the audience is committed to the station. So they'll go on that ride with them if they start playing a particular artists. I don't understand where the fear comes from.
Jacinta
I agree. I agree. I think you know, it's, it's sure bets. And that's the real shame of things, not taking risks and not extending, not having, I guess, music lovers at the helm, sometimes. And I don't know that that's true. And I don't want to suggest that people who program for commercial radio are not music lovers, but it can't be done in the way that it is around marketing concepts and, you know, figures that drive the sorts of decisions around ads. And still the power I guess, of, you know, having record companies being able to put stuff into radio stations is still something
Chelsea
Yeah absolutely. So you moved from a behind the scenes role, working creating playlists to on air for ABC, Melbourne 774, co presenting breakfast, co presenting the Friday Review with Brian Nankervis. And now you're delivering Afternoons. Afternoons is a magazine style show with news interviews and talkback, it feels miles away from where you started at Triple R presenting a music show. How did you approach moving into this style of broadcasting?
Jacinta
I think that's a really interesting thought, because the more I think about it, radio is radio is radio, I reckon. The fundamental of it is that you're in a relationship with one other person, you know, radio is talking to one person intimately and with interest. And whether you're doing a music show, and you're hoping to engage that person to listen to something in a way that you think is really beneficial, or you are speaking to someone and getting them to meet the person in your studio. That is, I think, fundamentally the same thing. And I think the more I've done radio, the more I realise it really is such a intimate and human space where you must find a way to be as close to a version of your true self as you possibly can, in any radio that you make.
Chelsea
Talkback is a radio style that I've had no experience with. It feels like a little bit like the wild west of broadcasting to me in terms of content because you don't know what the caller's will say or how it's gonna land. Is there a certain adrenaline rush for you in doing that? Is it nerve wracking? Have you had any train wreck moments or bizarre calls where you just thought, maybe we shouldn't let the public talk on?
Jacinta
This is like, and again, this goes back to those really fundamental community radio ideas where it's access. Talkback radio is the ultimate democracy in terms of access, you know, and I love it. The only radio I think that really satisfies every aspect of me, because it's really smart. And it's challenging intellectually. But it's also ridiculous and absurd and the most outrageous things happen. As a result of a live radio show that's responding almost to stuff that happens. That's kind of the ultimate, for me, in terms of creating any kind of work is that live aspect with the whole possibility of the things falling apart, we've had the most incredible things happen, because we're live on air. And you know, we're open for business and anything can happen.
Chelsea
You are so good at it. And you are so open to sort of receiving anything and you treat every listener that rings in with such generosity and warmth. Even though sometimes I think, what is this person talking about? And you're very gracious and patient with some of these wild calls. And regular podcast listeners of this podcast will know that I'm a big Kylie fan. So of course, I have to ask you about the Friday Review episode when Kylie Minogue I'm talking about, actually called in, can you tell us a little bit about that moment?
Jacinta
This needs a language warning, but I'll just that's as far as I'll go. I'll give you a language for sure. I don't do you know any of this language warning part of the story because I'd said delight to tell, basically, so we have this thing on the Friday Review with Brian Nankervis, where we'll do something called ‘A Close Encounter’. Because when you do radio, where the span of people and experiences is as extensive as it is, for our, you know, for our audience, you can say anyone and multiple people will have had the most outrageous interaction with them. You know, we say John English, this is one of the ones that stuck out in my head, Someone calls in and said, ‘Oh, yeah, he was drowning in the ocean once and I saved him’. You know, like, what? How? Like, this is so many examples of that. So Kylie Minogue was our close encounter, because it was her birthday. So we had people calling in with these wonderful stories of just, just wild encounters with Kylie Minogue just in the everyday world, right from when she was young, and they were hilarious. And while we were on our I looked at my phone, and I saw that she had tweeted, thank you for the birthday wishes. We didn't tweet because we're old radio and we don't even tweet stuff because we're so grandfatherly and motherly, we hadn't even tweeted. So it wasn't like she saw something on Twitter. She wrote a tweet, well, and I thought it was a PR person at the time, that said, ‘Thank you, Brian Nankervis and Jacunta Parsons’. And she tagged it, she tags as ‘Jacunta Parsons’ thanks for the birthday wishes. So I see that and I say, oh my god, Brian, while we're on air, Kylie has just tweeted at us, but she's called me Jacunta and Brian’s like, okay, enough of that that. And I go, because it turned blue. I assumed that it was someone's handle, you know, like there had to be a Jacunta in the world. And so I said it a couple of times. And it was a very funny moment because of obviously how rude that sounds, but also that we're talking about Kylie Minogue. And there was just a lot of hysteria around that. Then I look at the tweet again. And it has changed and my name is correctly spelt. So we're like, listening. Like, is it possible that Kylie Minogue because she was in Melbourne, is listening to ABC Radio Melbourne. So we said Kylie, if you're listening, give us a call on 1300 Triple 7 4 to that talkback line. Kind of as a gag, of course as a gag but also giving her the talkback line is just part of the whole thing you know, like Kylie will call upon a talkback line. Anyway, Kylie Minogue on her birthday, calls the talkback line to speak to us about mainly that Jacunta part. I think. She just sort of wanted to refer to it I said, she said ‘Have I given you a great laugh today’ and then it was just like, it just felt, so what local radio is about, you can be Kylie Minogue or Kevin from Bundoora and an equity of that space. And it's a place where we actually get to talk to each other. Like there is a real genuine sense of interacting right across the spectrum of a community. So it was a bloody thrill, and I was hysterically stupid, I was like, OMG its Kylie Minogue!. But yeah, like beautiful, just beautiful. and my listeners made me a necklace that I'm wearing right now, that reads Jacunta. So I love that T shirts. It's you know, it's quite beautiful.
Chelsea
Yeah, and it's this is the name that Kylie gave me. Yeah. I mean, what a story.
Jacinta
I mean, I can't get into trouble for that.
Chelsea
I love that. Kylie rang. She's such a Melbourne girl.
Jacinta
Well, bloody legend. Honestly.
Chelsea
I just love that. You know, she donated her costumes to Art Centre, Melbourne. And you know, you can drink the Kylie Rose at the Art Centre. You know, like, it's just, even though she's been in London for decades. You know, when she is in Melbourne? It feels like she's a real Melbourne girl.
Jacinta
Yeah. And that's so beautiful. Isn't it? Someone having that connection to this place that we feel very connected to her as well?
Chelsea
I'm currently reading your new book, a question of age, a huge congratulations. It's really beautifully written. I'm really resonating with a lot of the feelings and the questions that you're exploring throughout the work, especially as a female musician, and a mum in my late 30s. When did you first start thinking about ageing? Was that when you were unwell? Yeah. Or is it something you've been thinking about a lot.
Jacinta
You know, it definitely happened in music interviews, as well. There's a little example in the book where I'm interviewing this guy, and I think we're just on the level. And then he starts saying to me, you know, ‘the music was really inspired by Pokemon, that's something that my generation have been really into’ as if, like, I was some kind of dinosaur that wouldn't get it. And I didn't get it. I was like, Okay, great. I have no idea what you're talking about. Just these kind of moments, especially with music, I think, where there is a real tribalism about it sometimes. And that can be defined by age, I think it's a little different in independent musical circles, but it still is very much about who we are and how we identify through our generations, some of the time. So that's a, that's a huge part, I think of where the industry and where we are, as people is, is often really challenged. But illness was certainly a time where I had to face my mortality and my ageing and my body. You know, the things that we go through as an ageing person where you realise, oh, shit, this does not work as it used to, what am I going to do? I sort of went through a lot of that earlier when my body wasn't working, and I was really, really sick. And you have to adjust your life around that. And so, yeah, it was definitely sort of in my 20s that I had those sort of grave experiences of what it means to age.
Chelsea
Conversations around ageing in music has been bubbling over the last couple of years. I feel like it's ramped up a bit. I mean, during Madonna's billboard acceptance speech in 2016, she finished it with “do not age because to age is a sin, you will be criticized, you will be vilified, and you will definitely not be played on the radio”. Tina Arena made comments around age in her Bigsound speech in 2019, where she talked about how women over 40, don't get played on commercial radio. And last year, there was the hashtag ageing in campaign that took off domestically. However, it's it still seems that female artists have a use by date, regardless of genre. I mean, what do you think needs to happen in the music industry, and in our culture more broadly, for this attitude to shift?
Jacinta
I think it's a huge mirror to the larger issues that we have around ageing, where we have this really destructive fascination with youth, youth is this wonderful time and it absolutely is. But ageing is equally as wonderful and all sorts of different ways. But we are commercialised, and we're objectified, and we're sexualized. And that has especially happened in the music industry. We see how we treat our young women. And that's usually to objectify and to almost slut-shame, I think in lots of ways in that real commercial kind of space. And then when we get older, we don't see older women in the music industry. And we certainly don't celebrate their achievements historically, either. Like that's starting to change, but it's still well behind. It's like women haven't existed. And therefore, you know, it's been a really hard thing to shift that. Obviously we have this incredible crop of wonderful musicians coming through, and older musicians that are finding a way to carve a space for themselves. But I think it's massive. And I think like there is there's limits to what we can do, because it's so systemic, and it's so socially derived. But I really think we are powerful consumers. And we're powerful community members and we need to vote with our feet. and with what we'd love to do, I think we need to be really conscious about how we support all the women in the music industry, especially if that's where we're focusing this conversation. But yes, I think that we need to make sure that not only are we looking at diversity on the bill, for all the things that are really important, the cultural diversity, that we're looking at gender diversity, that we're looking at ensuring that there's disability, and First Nations ,all the stuff that's really important, I think we also need to start looking at age, and that the heritage that we celebrate isn't only men. And it's not only heritage that we're celebrating in older musicians, that musicianship is not something that is only found at young people, and then we keep playing that stuff. Older musicians are making new stuff all the time, and we need to have them there. So that they are part of the organic kind of sound and culture of our world.
Chelsea
It's really interesting, and very obvious to observe that with some of our male musicians, when they get older, they become, you know, genius, you know, Paul Kelly, or, you know, Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan, they become these geniuses of our time, whereas women who get older in music aren't given the sort of genius treatment. And I think you're right, it's about that kind of multi-pronged attack about how we support women throughout their entire careers. And hopefully, we stay on the journey with them regardless of the age. One of the things that you touch on in the book is the treatment of Britney Spears, in terms of the judgement she received for her early film clips for being hypersexual. That ongoing judgement around her public breakdown. Now, we're understanding more about what happened to her during her conservatorship, which has been quite public, and through the documentaries that have been on streaming platforms, but now we're seeing this sort of public backlash and judgement for her expressing herself on social media and posting pictures of her frolicking on the beach in a bikini or semi naked, it just seems that it doesn't really matter, what's going on there, what age or stage she's at. She's there to be judged. And you said in your book that you realise we've all sort of taken part in that public judgement of Britney, what's your take on the Britney situation now?
Jacinta
It's so illuminating, isn't it? I mean, that's one example of the way that we objectify, sexualize, destroy women. It's it's almost, it's rote. We it's born into us, that we regard the work of women to be often vacuous. You know, I grew up in an era where women, if they were creative, you'd wonder who had actually done the work behind it,
Chelsea
who really wrote the song?
Jacinta
I mean, that is an absurdity. I mean, it's criminal, that that's part of what we were also taught about ourselves. And I just, in the light of day, realising how easily and how still easily it is sold to us, that the work of younger women is tainted, somehow, there was some agenda there, there was some, there was something going on, we don't trust them. We don't trust that they could possibly be sexual, we don't trust all of the aspects that we also encourage. And it just really woke me up to that whole participation in the system. How it was pretty easy to sell us ideas of insanity and, you know, craziness and not living the way that we deem respectable by standards that are not applied across the board. And I see that now in for older women, for any women that wish to either monetize or take on a system or have any sense of power within it, your number will come up and you will be hurt. We see it also across the different kinds of spectrums of our minority groups as well, watch out, when you push or when you're seen to be successful. It could only last a certain time and it is very provisional, on behaving in certain ways. That's still the case. It is still the case that we are applying these ideas to our women in all the facets of our life. But music is a really interesting place where we still judge, we judge women constantly.
Chelsea
Yeah, regardless of if they're wearing lots of clothes or hardly any clothes. I mean, Billy Eilish has also received, why does she wear such baggy outfits? What's going on there?
Jacinta
There's no winning, there's no winning, we are fascinated, and we see that there is still power in the destruction of women. So it's a pastime, it's a, it's an obsession, and we must stop participating in it, we must stop being silent to it, we must vote in the positive ways that we can by going and supporting women in their music and in their creative endeavors. We must be there to be the people watching and enjoying and celebrating and being inspired by the work and not leave it up to society. That's, that's interested in all of the demeaning ways that we treat women.
Chelsea
You also mentioned the song WAP, the ‘wet ass pussy’ song of the other year, do you feel like anything's changing in terms of how women can own their sexual expression in music? Because that song I'm a bit unsure about in terms of everyone was saying, ‘Oh, it's just so new and fresh’. And this has never been done before. And I thought hang on a second, what happened to lick my neck? My back that song from 20 years ago? Or what about salt and pepa? I feel like there's a lot of songs where women have had these kind of conversations, maybe not in that exact same language.
Jacinta
Yeah, I'm I don't think it's new, I agree with you. But I think it's old still how we respond to it, you know, we've been doing, we are not comfortable with sexual agency for women. And so I don't think women, I don't think the conversation around whether the sexual expression is positive or negative is even part of our conversation yet. It's that we must allow agency for women, and we can't be frightened of it. Or, you know, it's also really just changed the way I feel in more of my day to day life around women in the way that they express. It really brought home to me, nothing happens in these exchanges, and in these creative worlds, except if there's danger outside. Nothing is dangerous inside, you know, nothing is dangerous about these expressions, except if it is threatening and then threatened. And so, again, it's about the normalisation of the female, the sexual and empowered in whatever that however, that empowerment expresses itself. Even if we can say, ‘look, that's been built in the patriarchy, and it's, you know, satisfying the male gaze’, who cares? It's irrelevant at this point of our evolution. I just think, again, women have absolutely got to stand beside women and not participate in any of the demeaning aspects of how we treat women when we think they've stepped outside, societal bounds.
Jacinta
Can you talk about ageism, in terms of women working in the media? Do you feel that that's different from women working in music?
Jacinta
No, I think we're very much and I wish, I wish there was more of a collective sense of the Music Media belonging to the artist experience as well, in that we are judged and I have been, as well as a woman, not knowing the things that I should know if I really know about music, the way that we have gendered music, knowledge, it's, it's only done through the male frame of stats and figures and knowledge whereas my knowledge of music is about impact and emotion and understanding in a completely different way. It's not, obviously this is not stereotypically gendered, but to think about it, we've always had a very masculine concept of what music knowledge is, for example, and then authority. Again, that shifting but it takes such a, it has to go through the male frame first, before you can break free of it. We have to embody those sense of authority. I've had to change my voice I think I haven't meant to but I think my voice is lower than perhaps it would be naturally. I don't know. I've been accused of giggling and sounding like a girl and, and all that stuff through as if that's an insult, like, how dare you but it is an insult and you will get work or you won't get work if you please an audience. And an audience is not comfortable yet. They're getting there. And part of my work I feel like is about stretching out those ideas of what a woman is and can be in a public environment. You know, in the media, it's not this one idea of whatever, you know, it's we're humans, of course, that's obvious, but it's very hard to perform in these spaces, without the gendered lens impacting and without it having been a huge impact on my development through my career.
Chelsea
It's interesting that you mentioned the vocal speaking range, because that is a real thing. There's some essays, there’s articles, there's a whole bunch of academic writing in this space, because women's speaking voices have lowered, especially in the last few decades. And it is, especially around the 80s. When you think about shoulder pads, I think it's the equivalent of that - it's about lowering the voice is sitting on boys table, we put the shoulder pads on the vocals dropped. But it is really hard for women to sustain speaking at the lower end of our range all the time, I'm I speak very low for what I can, you know what I can sing, because I have a three octave range. Whereas women in Asia are still speaking quite high, you know, like anything Japanese women, atrigato gozaimaus, its right up here (speaks higher) it's fine up here. Whereas especially Australian women have very like, yeah, this kind of low range is, yeah, it's really interesting. It's like we've done that to be sort of taken more seriously and take out the girly parts of our voice. But don't be too masculine. Because then you’re too butch.
Jacinta
It's all the same things that we face visually, which is fascinating. There's no way to hide, even in the way, things we can talk about. We are demeaned for being too much, too mumsy, too female to our interests being vacuous, or silly, you know, to get by, you've got to, you can be a woman, but you must embody really, what the patriarchy has kind of said, is worthwhile stuff. And that's the sport and it's politics and it's all the things that you know, of course, women are absolutely interested in, but it's a gendered concept of what is actually important stuff. And so we're still absolutely battling that stuff. And when I was doing breakfast with Sammy Shah, the thing that we both noticed was we were both attacked, him racially and me for my gender. But I really felt gender stuff was so persistent. So insidious, ‘stop talking over’ stop, you know, like, it's really so deeply embedded in the way we think of women. It's very hard to pull it apart. And then you embody that shame as well. You feel like a hysterical girl, or, you know, you feel like you've been too loud in a space. All of that stuff breaks my bloody heart. And I think it's changing. Absolutely, it is. But we cannot be fooled to think that we're at the end in any way, shape, or form, we are absolutely working, still very hard to make it possible for humans to be humans.
Chelsea
And how did you deal with that kind of criticism?
Jacinta
It was a massive, massive criticism for two years, it was public. It was articles, it was letters to the editor, it was hundreds and hundreds of text messages to us personally. It's a really interesting thing. And I think we don't talk about this stuff properly. And I still haven't worked out how, when you start living in a public way, like you would understand this, you're compelled from a musical perspective, to do something publicly. Not because you want to be public. I was compelled to make radio not because I want to be public. But because I love radio, you know, but suddenly, you are public. And people project a lot of stuff on to you. I think we need to understand people say ‘oh don't read it, don't worry about it’. I think that really misses the point. There is abuse going on, you were being abused, to pretend that that's not happening is a gaslighting of sorts, you know, don't, you know, don't feed the trolls. There is an experience happening. And I think we need to learn how to protect people who are in those situations, and understand that there is real life damage, and that you don't necessarily have a great personality to deal with it. You know, I think everybody finds it tough. I think some of the most tried and true professionals find it really tough to be personally criticised every single day. So yeah, I've got a lot to say on that. I think it's something that obviously women are impacted on a lot in the music industry and across social media. And I think we need to take them more seriously and in a whole range of ways.
Chelsea
I just don't get it. I don't get why, If you've got those opinions, why bother? Don't you have other things
to do?
Jacinta
You want to hurt someone, you want that person to be in their place. You do not like the idea that that person will walk around thinking that they're okay. You must make sure that they don't feel okay about themselves. That's part of the compulsion. It's power. It's bullying. It's all the things that we speak about broadly, but we really don't understand very well. And we enable it and we normalise it. And it's not until big organisations say, actually, it's not okay in the NFL to behave this way, as a crowd, or as a club. It's not okay, in the music industry, to, you know, have sexual abuse as part of your day to day work. It’s not okay, actually, it really is important that we are overt, firstly, we must understand what's happening. And then secondly, we must understand the severity of the behaviour as well, to make sure that we're dealing with it properly.
Chelsea
You've now released two books. Creatively, what made you decide to move into writing? Have you always been a writer?
Jacinta
I always have been a writer, but it was actually, this is kind of crazy, but while I was having the worst couple of years of my life in radio, as described moments ago, with all of the trauma that I went through, I thought, shit, I'm only a radio maker, that's my only skill in all the world. And that's not a skill that's just a facilitation, you know, I don't actually have anything of my own
Chelsea
Oh, it is a skill that is absolute rubbush
Jacinta
But there is such a small way, you can actually get an opportunity to do it. So I thought, shit, I've got to get myself some work of my own. So I thought, Look, I'll write a write a book, what would I write about? And I guess, I, it took me a little while to think that I would write about illness as my first book, I thought, gosh, everyone else has got such a interesting and full story when it comes to that I don't have a huge amount to say. But it was really it's been the most beautiful thing I've ever done, I think is share the intimacy of what it's like to have an illness that, you know, you can't see, and how that's related very deeply around the illness community, for these shared aspects of that that we have with each other. So I'm so glad I was in a really shit position and had to think of my way out of it, because that's what sort of came of it.
Chelsea
It's so brave of you to write about such a personal experience, and to be willing to share that and in such a beautifully written way. But what was that experience like for you? Is it kind of reliving trauma? It's not something you just want to put behind you and go yeah, I went through this thing, did it helps you come to terms with things more?
Jacinta 48:02
Yeah. There's a point I think you get to with grief, and with experiences where there's a tender, lovingness about it, you know, I think I was at that point, I cried a lot writing it. But it wasn't traumatic. It was more grieving in that loving way, you know, the pain that I'd gone through, wasn't paying any more it was just having to process it. So it was a really profound experience actually. I did feel really exposed and really worried. You know, and I think back on that, and I'm like, wow, we're so made to feel like we've got to be like everyone else. It's just so fucking weird. You know, how deeply that's embedded in us. I was, I remember talking about my illness on radio and talking about a colostomy bag and thinking, oh my God, will my workmates not want to talk to me anymore? I mean, what an absurd thought. But I actually was anxious about people finding out about the extent of my illness. And I think, you know, it speaks to all of those things that we've been talking about, just, I think how we're made to feel shame and how it takes a bit of collective and shared stories and storytelling, for us to realise, hang on, we've bought something that none of us actually agree with, you know, we're not none of us are into the ideas that we've grown up believing. So I think, you know, every story that contributes to it is a really, really wonderful thing. So yeah, I'm, I'm proud that I'm a small part of a really big story.
Chelsea
It's such a different thing to put together a book as opposed to planning a radio show. How did you go about approaching your new book “A Question Of Age”. I mean, I really love I don't want to give any spoilers here, but you sort of talk about elements. And there's a lot about whether which I think is a really beautiful, kind of, you know, life is in seasons, so it's a beautiful way to kind of think about, you know, our lives and we age and, and relating that back to nature. But how did you go about planning this structure and the stories?
Jacinta
It started out a different sort of contemplation, you know, I sort of just started thinking about the book, a fairly satisfied kind of, you know, stages of ageing and kind of exploring all the ways that we go through it, but then it just didn't sit right with me and I felt like it needed a more lateral, more emotional anchor. And so for some reason, I just decided that I wanted to divide it up into the elements, you know, fire earth, wind. And I wanted to travel through those elements as another sub story around the Ash Wednesday bushfires, which is just fucking weird what I don't even fucking know, I showed my publisher and I said, you're gonna think this is so weird. She's like, I love it, do it. So it just sort of gives that metaphor, I think for how the elements, drought and fire and wind, and all the aspects that we go through are actually so much part of the humanity, you know, how we're so connected to the way the world moves, and the seasons and the shifts that we have. So just found like a much easier way to access the truth of the story. For me anyway, it's not about the top layer, it's really about those layers that sit really deep inside us that are like the Earth, you know. And so it was also a real pleasure to write. Because I've got to explore it from that perspective.
Chelsea
It's really unlike a lot of other books that I've read, because it kind of traverses this space where there's this story about the bushfires, and it's very descriptive of being a young kid and the impact of that and family life. And then all of a sudden, we’re hearing something about an academic, or some facts. And we're kind of go from memoir to poetry, to personal reflection to commentary on Britney Spears. And it's, I'm really enjoying the kind of journey through all of that. And I really hope there's going to be so many more books.
Jacinta
So do I but I don’t know! It's such a joy of I really love writing, like, my goodness, what an indulgence, it's a beautiful activity,
Chelsea
You've achieved so much, what do you still want to achieve?
Jacinta
That's so interesting. The thing that still always sort of sits in me is this idea of service, you know, how are you in service? There's so many things, so many inequities with women and with First Nations communities I feel so strongly about, I wonder if I'll end up heading in that direction. I really don't know. Hope to do some, like, create some television. But you know, that's an impossibility. So we'll see. But, yeah, just kind of creating and still thinking and challenging. And all those sorts of things. I think there's always something to create.
Chelsea
I think I've got one more question for you, I wanted to ask you, if you have any advice for anyone who wants to move into broadcasting or writing.
Jacinta
I think for me, and it will be different for everyone how you actually carve the elephant, whats the metaphor? You can't eat a whole elephant, it's realising that everything that you want to do is really made up of really small actions toward it. And so, you know, some of those ideas are really big, some of them aren't very big writing is something that you can do regardless, but it's always staying really close to why you're doing it in the first place. And I know, that's all very boring, when you want to be somewhere. But I really think, because I yearned to be not doing what I was doing for such a long time. It wasn't until I lost everything, and started again like this, that it really did start to be a very true expression. You know, and I think there are access points for all the things that you want to do to build, to build, to build, to build, to realise why you're doing it, what's the purpose? How can you make that a bigger thing? How can you grow that, you know? Writings is like that broadcasting is like that. There's so much ability to take that into your hands these days, rather than waiting for the three jobs that are available. Yeah, I think just the application to creating with an honour to the creation, I think I know that sounds again, very cheeseball-y, but I really believe it was on my heart. And I think it's not career advice, but it's an advice on how you can have an attitude while navigating the world, I reckon.
Chelsea
I think that's brilliant advice. And I think it's really important for any creative industry or creative practice that somebody might want to do, because it doesn't necessarily always equate to becoming a vocation and that's okay. I think we're in a very capitalist society where if you're good at something like music, it's, well, you better get paid to do gigs, because that legitimizes somehow, your craft, but it doesn't have to be about money, you know, what is the actual motivation? And what are you trying to share? And what are you trying to contribute to the world?
Jacinta
Yeah, that's it. And the more you focus on that properly, the more likely it is actually that you create something that is true, and resonates with people. The more I think we grasp and hope and, you know, strategize and all the things that we do, which is also part of it, but it's really also just always coming back to a very simple premise of why am I doing this? What do I want to make from this? How do I make my best of it, which is the other thing, every single time I make anything, every single radio show graveyard, anything. I made sure I did my best job. And that didn't mean it was a good job, but it was my best job. You never take a shortcut, is my kind of vibe. Like you're always doing your best work, no matter what the work is. And I think that's also one of those things that means there's honour in what you're doing always
Chelsea
Jacinta thank you so much for joining me on the control podcast.
Jacinta
What a bloody joy. Thank you so much for having me.
