Braided

Episode Four – Braided on the Air – The Music Show! This episode of Braided features some cracking tunes by the hosts of this show, who also talk us through their creative practice. You’ll hear from Painters and Dockers legend Paulie Stewart, and lifetime music aficionado Kevin, as we learn about what music means to people, and how it shapes their lives.

In the second part of Georgia and Georgina’s program about community art spaces you’ll hear from Chook – a long time community arts worker- about the importance of communal arts spaces and their impact on people’s lives. Georgia and Georgina will share some of their own experiences at the Artful Dodgers studios and you’ll hear some great tracks by young people coming out of the AD music studios.

In this episode Georgia and Georgina talk community art spaces! You’ll hear interviews with community art workers about the purpose and process of these spaces, and stories from some of the young people accessing these services. Keep an ear out too for some cracking tracks produced out of the music studio at Artful Dodgers studios!

In this first episode the Braided team talk about their experience broadcasting with SYN Radio. They interview radio trainer Jasmine and share clips from the radio shows they made this season.You’ll hear about the nerves and excitement of live radio, and get an inside look at young people’s lives.Listen in here for a sneak peak of what’s to come in the third season of Braided.

Introducing Braided on the Air!

In this episode the Braided team talk about their experience broadcasting with SYN Radio. They interview radio trainer Jasmine and share clips from the radio shows they made this season.You’ll hear about the nerves and excitement of live radio, and get an inside look at young people’s lives.Listen in here for a sneak peak of what’s to come in the third season of Braided.

In this final episode, we reflect on what making this season has meant to us. Step inside our last story meeting for Season Two, to hear the team’s rose (highlight) and thorn (challenge) moments. Also in this episode, we reflect on body positivity, which leads Agum, inevitably, to a story of bikinis and coconut-butter. We part ways over the plucked notes of Reggie’s final ‘update’. Having just taken-up the piano again, Reggie decided to take a “different approach”. This many episodes into lockdown, they know what sounds they want to make

Join us for this sound-led episode of Braided. The producers turn their microphones on the foregrounds and backgrounds of their lives, from purring kittens and lighting, to British cooking shows, and a featured sonic outing by musician Danny Hillyer.

When Danny begins creating an original track, he often starts with a single element. It might be a looping guitar riff, an individual sound effect, or a driving drum pattern. The layers build from there, and eventually, the track’s mood reveals itself.

In the case of A Tension and the Talisman, though, Danny’s eight-minute sound-piece, it began, instead, with a mood. Specifically, panic. Feeling intense anxiety one evening, Danny decided to go out for a walk along a nearby creek. By the time he returned home in the early hours of the morning, his mental state had shifted.

In the three-part structure of the piece, Danny tracks the three stages of nights like those: the panic that leads him outdoors; the moment of peace when beginning the walk, and the elevated mood by the time he returns home: ‘the clearing of the mind’. The walk, Danny says, ‘has an effect like a talisman of sorts’.

Over reverb-soaked guitars, electric buzzing, synths and programmed beats, we hear sounds recorded in the surroundings of the creek near Danny’s home in the early hours of the morning. Music and sound design meld to evoke the physical and emotional landscapes he traverses on those nights. The piece takes us out, and brings us home.

Finally, listen in to the latest of Reggie’s ‘updates’, as they let us in on the inner sanctum of their dietary world.

Credits: Produced by Danny Hillyer with soundscapes by Kim Handley, Georgia Wilmott (spelling) and Elijah Augustine?

Incense is a commodity which is widely accessible and has been used for centuries to celebrate rituals, perform sacred ceremonies, and invoke sensory pleasure. 

Growing up in West Footscray with Asian heritage, incense was always present in Kim’s life—in the homes of her family members, at the temple during Chinese New Year, and in the shopfronts of local business. She didn’t question the Buddhist ceremonies, and offered incense at her grandparents’ funerals, along with the rest of her family.

These days, Kim lives in Melbourne’s inner-city suburb of Collingwood where a box of incense can retail for as much as $42 at nearby boutiques. When Covid-19 began, she noticed incense appearing on more lifestyle instagram accounts. One was selling a French incense under their own brand for $60.

Stripped of any religious significance, Kim began to wonder what the meaning of incense was all those years ago when she was first exposed to it. During lockdown, she sits down with her mother, Binh, to learn about its cultural significance and examine the disconnect between her past and present, bringing old memories to the fore—along with new insights.

Also in this episode, Georgia and Elijah find common music-video ground in Green Day. Agum lets Matisse in on the ‘next level’ challenges of living with young kids in a high-rise during Covid19. And we bring you part four of ‘Reggie’s Update’: musings on life in lockdown from Reggie’s desk. It seems that reading The Empath Experience by Sydney Campos has given Reggie some food for thought/insights.

Credits:Contributions from Binh and Paul.Music by FoolBoy Media, Shane Ivers, Joe Bae, Jesse Sullivan & Danny Hillyer.With thanks to Anastasia Charisiou, the Charisiou family and Jack Gilbert.

‘Welcome to our podcast, bitches.’

Meet Matisse Laida and Mary: two young, funny, unapologetic, twenty-one year-old, black women with … some things to say. Mary, who is South Sudanese (and a Taurus) and Matisse, who is Mauritian (and a Pisces), met during a Braided workshop and instantly gelled. ‘So we decided to keep talking.’ The result is Vibe—a fast, feisty, candid exchange that pulls no punches.

What began as a plan to discuss an experience they have in common—navigating share-house dynamics as a young, black person—shifts into something else when Matisse describes a recent frustration. She found herself in lockdown during the recent, global Black Lives Matter protests in a household of predominantly white people. ‘I [was] losing my mind.’

As the banter continues, Mary and Matisse discover in each other an outlet to air the things most pressing on them at this time: the death of George Floyd and the ensuing discussions sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement. They speak to systematic oppression, challenging the status-quo, and their own first-hand experiences of racism.

Hear these women tell you how to check your friends, ‘start learning about the culture, take accountability’ — and vibe with these two.

Also in this episode: reminiscing on a 90’s Spice Girls cassette; Agum checks in with Jenny from season one; and Reggie talks gender fluidity via onyx black fingernail polish in the third instalment of Reggie’s Update. 

Credits:Vibe: Matisse and MaryWith music from Jesse Sullivan, The Desolettes, Savage the GirlAlso in this episode Musings from Jenny Curran, Reggie, Danny, Agum and Elijah singing us out.