Barbican Guide
February 2021

‘Mum used to play classical music to me before I was born, and during my childhood, and I always just felt at home listening to classical music, especially the big grand orchestral pieces.

‘The combination of the didgeridoo and orchestra, I think, is quite an intriguing thing. I wanted to create new repertoire for the didgeridoo and not make it a tokenistic sort of collaboration. I wanted it to be a real and meaningful engagement of this ancient instrument, the didgeridoo, the yidaki, with these magical instruments of the orchestral world. They do both go hand in hand. The didgeridoo is made out of the branch of a tree. But I think this finding the breath and the language that helps communicate the cause, and the cause for me was to reach out beyond my own community, beyond Mount Isa, not only nationally in Australia but internationally, and just share this something special of unity on stage.

‘So through this collaboration with the ACO in particular, having my work ‘Didge Fusion’ be performed is quite special. There's a song component that I sing within the work: It’s like “Kalkadung man, Kalkadung woman, teaching young bila bila around the campfire in the night, we got to watch, listen, learn, and then we got to do it ourselves”. I’m talking about the passing of the culture around the campfire in the night. And I wrote that bit of the song, that melody, when I was 15 years old, and so it holds deep in my heart.

‘The reason why it's called ‘Didge Fusion’ is that I combined my other musical influences, from listening to alternative, heavy rock and rock music, to the classical. From a bit of AC/DC to Bach and Vivaldi. I wanted to combine those elements with the guitar and the didgeridoo, make it really interesting, and have this level of musicianship that I can still keep on getting better at. That's another beautiful thing about collaborating – it makes you a better artist, if you're collaborating with the right people.’

Listen to the full interview here:

Have you checked out Soundhouse yet? Our platform for creative radio and podcasting has three ‘listening rooms’ curated by audio artists who’ve selected innovative and interesting stories for you to listen to. The rooms run on a continual loop, meaning people can’t rewind or fast-forward – bringing a sense of communal listening to the experience.

And if – like many – you’re something of a radio and podcasting fan, delve deeper with some fascinating essays about listening, accessibility, and the art of telling stories.

Race, equity and justice reporter at San Francisco public radio station KQED, Sandhya Dirk, wrote about who speaks and who gets to listen. Read an excerpt below – and check out the whole thing here and immerse yourself in the listening rooms here.

I remember the first time I felt the magic of an interview, of capturing what felt like the real at the center of another person’s story. I had only met Talice in the moments before I switched on the recorder. I was reporting on the high drop-out rate in Oakland public high schools, looking for students who were on the cusp of leaving, and a teacher told me I should talk to Talice.

'Do you mind talking to me,' I asked.

'Okay,' she said, as I sat down on the stairs of the school hallway while she leaned her tiny frame against a wall. And it came out of her: the mother with a crack habit who would steal from her, having to put a lock on the door to her room, the good grades now slipping because she was working two jobs to keep the lights on at home.

I held the microphone up, even as my arm shook. I stared into her eyes. She was so tired, she said. She cried. And then I cried.

'I’ve never told anybody all this before,' Talice said.

For a long time I thought something had happened in that moment that had allowed me to bottle magic within the confines of my recording device. Something honest, something real.

But now I wonder if something else, invisible, was happening in those moments instead: was my recording device a kind of cage that I was trapping Talice in? Was I stealing her voice? Mining her for her story?

My mam let me watch the film Chicago (2002) when I was far too young – eight years old, to be precise – to understand it. The reason she allowed it, however, was for bonding’s sake. We had grown up with the soundtrack from the stage show always playing in her car and I knew every word - though I was strictly forbidden from singing along to the “screwing the milkman” verse from Cell Block Tango. My mother and I were obsessed with the show tunes soundtrack and blasted it on every car trip we took so, when the movie came out, she allowed an eight-year-old me to give it a watch. (And a watch at least once a week for the following year.)

My favourite song from the CD and from the film itself has always been When You're Good to Mama, which was performed in the film by Queen Latifah. Her character is in charge of the inmates of the women’s prison, she is a character who is sexy and a character who is – most importantly to me at the time – plus-size. Just like me. Just like my mother. Just like pretty much every woman in my family.

Matron Mama Morton uses her authority and influence to not just benefit her inmates, but most importantly, benefit herself. The confidence of this plus-size Black woman and her position of power served as inspiration to a child-sized me that fat can be beautiful, fat can be sexual, and fat can be empowering.

This embodiment of fatness as not just accepted, but celebrated, is reprised by Queen Latifah five years later in her role as Motormouth Maybelle in Hairspray (2007). Where John Travolta’s Edna Turnblad is learning to love herself, Motormouth Maybelle already does. She is imperative in not just providing a safe space and opportunities for her Black community, but for inspiring mother and daughter duo Tracey and Edna Turnblad in their self-love journeys.

This iteration of Hairspray exemplifies the inspirational nature of Motormouth Maybelle as a fat positive figure with her solo song Big, Blonde and Beautiful, but in the original Hairspray (1988) - which is notably, not a musical - Ruth Brown’s Motormouth Maybelle embodied body positivity in a totally different manner. Her size is not mentioned, but she is repeatedly shown in gaudy but gorgeous outfits and is a figurehead for her community regardless of her fatness.

This Hairspray also differs from its musical remake by being much more explicit with its fatphobic language: from Amber Von Tussle repeatedly slating Tracey’s size, to Edna Turnblad (played by Divine) asking Tracey to cut the calories and if she’s ‘taken the appetite suppressant’ that the doctor ‘recommended’, the subject of weight is crucial to the story. Still, these more extreme interactions don’t feel all that exaggerated when viewing them as a fat person. If anything, these harsh criticisms from family and peers feel incredibly realistic to the lived experience of a fat person.

Contextually however, these fatphobic Hairspray scenes are incredibly tongue-in-cheek when considering Divine and John Waters’ pivotal roles in changing fat representation on screen.

Female Trouble (1974), for example, had a revolutionary role not just in my life, but in the lives of many fat people in changing how we see ourselves. Dawn Davenport repeatedly tells her peers and viewers that she is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’ and as an audience, we believe her. Not just because she notifies us at several points in the film but because, like Motormouth Maybelle, she embodies it. By treating herself as the most beautiful woman in the world, it raises the question: Why couldn’t the most attractive person in existence also be fat?

It is worth recognising that Hairspray and Female Trouble’s inclusive nature of fat bodies - in many roles, rather than a token singularity - is a trademark of John Waters, who’s entire filmography uplifts different kinds of plus-size people throughout. As well as Ruth Brown, Ricki Lake and Divine, Waters’ cast members have included fellow fat actors Edith Massey, Jean Hill and Mary Jo Catlett. All fat people, playing fat characters, who are more nuanced than simply having fat-centric storylines, but are also empowered and liberated by their fatness.

All the plus-size characters listed above have led the way in creating fat narratives in cinema that are complex, diverse but also celebratory. It is far too easy for more mainstream movies like Norbit (2007) and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) to include plus-size characters - not even played by fat actors - and make them a punchline. The joke being, ‘Isn’t fatness repulsive?’

Similarly, films with fat characters that try to show the importance of “inner beauty” - Shallow Hal (2001), The Nutty Professor (1996) and I Feel Pretty (2018) - do a disservice to plus size people by basing their plots around the idea that fat people can be loved in “spite” of their bodies. This rhetoric works around the implication that fatness is a negative that can be worked around.

Why my eight-year-old-self loved Chicago, my eighteen-year-old-self loved Hairspray and why I am still obsessed with both these musicals and the back catalogue of John Waters centres around the portrayal of fatness as a positive. Fat people are surely more than “just” our bodies. Simultaneously, our bodies are worthy of love, attention and adoration for their fatness alone too.

Reframing the Fat Body is a programme of shorts where fat bodies are freed from the restraints put upon them by modern society and allowed to be fluid, free, sexy and radical. Available on Cinema On Demand from 1–28 Feb. The programme also features a ScreenTalk by Grace Barber-Plentie, who curated the programme, Tara Brown and Chloe Sheppard.

Gina Tonic is a creative freelance culture journalist based in Manchester. She champions a feminist perspective in her work and has been writing professionally for over six years. Tonic currently holds editing roles with Polyester Zine and The Breakdown and co-founded The Fat Zine in 2020.