Making music that talks

For all my talk about keeping up with this blog and bringing you along for my adventures, I’m doing a lousy job of writing… But I haven’t been idle, I can promise you that!

I’ve been working a lot on my music lately, and I think things are finally happening. About a month ago, I went to a local music festival. The plan was for me to play some acoustic music in a creative arts tent when all was quiet on the main stage, but there were very few breaks for me to play.

However, it wasn’t a total loss, as I learned there was an open-mic event on the last day of the festival. I had been putting the finishing touches on a fun song titled ‘Wheelchair Babe’, and I thought, if I could just figure out the last couple of lines, it would be the perfect song to share at the open-mic event.

It was a hit. The audience loved it, and people who spoke to me afterwards recognised the importance of this particular kind of song-writing – crafting songs specifically about and for the disability experience, explicitly using the words ‘disability’ and ‘wheelchair’.

I uploaded it to YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. It got a few more views than my usual content, and I thought, this is really what I need to focus on. I decided to put more original music out, so that, by the time I have an actual album released, there is a more substantial following ready to listen.

I’ve spoken to a local recording studio, which would be able to record my music using my NDIS funds, basically treating it like a mix of a music program and career opportunity. I’d been in talks with them a while ago, and then so many things in life had popped up and I hadn’t go around to going in for an actual meeting.

A week ago, I sat down in my office and recorded another of my original songs, ‘The NDIS Song’. It’s inspired by my gripes and frustrations with this broken bureaucratic mess that we can’t live with and can’t live without. I threw that onto social media as well, and didn’t think much of it.

I first uploaded it to TikTok, then put it on YouTube. Once I was finished the YouTube upload, I checked back on TikTok. I noticed the notification for a comment, and thought, oh, someone’s already seen it!

Yeah, it had 800 views within the first 20 minutes. A few hours later it 5,000 views. A week later it’s sitting at almost 40,000 views, with a few hundred comments. So many people are agreeing with my perspective, and sharing their own frustrations and heartbreaks with the NDIS.

There was one comment calling us entitled and essentially silly for relying for the government, and I did a follow-up video describing the exact facts of why the NDIS fails. It’s getting more engagement, which is promising for future advocacy.

I’ve also sent emails to Bill Shorten, local MP David Gillespie, the Daily Mail Australia, The Project, The Drum, Q&A and Pedestrian TV, with links to the video and with a heartfelt email asking them to consider sharing the video on social media, to lift up the voices of those of us in the disability community. Hopefully I’ll see some fruit of those labours next week.

Today I uploaded another original song, ‘Pretty Disabled’, to Facebook. It’s been getting a wonderful response. Lots of compliments and support, so incredibly encouraging. I’ll be uploading it to TikTok tomorrow, and I’m imagining it will do quite well, because a lot of people in the disability community started following me after my NDIS Song, and I think they’ll appreciate this self-love anthem.

Things are happening, my friends. I think things are happening. I think my music is finally making waves and touching hearts. And, come the new year, I think I’ll finally be able to record an album, and start performing my disability-focused music in local gigs, and start my campaign of awareness, entertainment, love and sass.

Let’s change the world with a melody and a smile.

Bless.