“Last year I released my very first album called Playing Dead. The songs on the aIbum tell a lot of stories and reflect a lot of my life experiences and my thinking around what I consider important social issues. I dedicated my album to my nan who is my number one fan and about to turn 90! She is one of 7 children in the Bell family, 6 girls and 1 boy. I love hearing the old stories about her childhood in Ballina. They were pretty poor as most people were then but they never went hungry. My great grand dad caught fish in the river every morning in the days when there were still fish to be caught. Their cow provided milk and they kept her where Ballina public school currently stands which used to be common land. Green street in Alstonville is named after my great, great grandfather. He built the first house single handedly and every couple of new children that came along, (16 in total!) he would build on another room so it looked really higgledy piggledy. It’s not there anymore.
I have fond memories of coming for holidays in Ballina and going to Coraki to visit my great Aunt Myrtle Parker who was well known for her massive bell collection and painting dolls and crockery. She had a big shed out the back of her 70s home where we would sit and paint faces on rocks and things like that.
The last song on the album ‘In the Water’ is based on the story of my Aunty Myrtle losing her 4 year old daughter when she drowned in the canal at Ballina while she was playing in an old boat. It was the day before my nan and grandfather’s wedding so a pretty tragic time. A few years later my Nan also lost her husband (my mother’s father) in a car accident when my mum was only four years old. My nan did an amazing job with the help of her mother to raise two young daughters without her husband.
All of the Bell sisters were skilled people. They sewed their own clothes, baked and made things. They worked as nurses, teachers, cleaners, blind makers and things like that. I don’t have much patience for sewing but learnt enough from mum to help me with my opp-shop costumes. My Nanna later remarried my pop who was also an inspiring character. He was deaf and he amazed us all by teaching himself the ukulele at 80 even though he couldn’t really hear himself. His fingers were so stiff and crooked, I don’t even know how he brushed his teeth! I tell that story to my students to encourage them. If a deaf old man with mangled fingers can do it then so can you!
On my Dad’s side, my Avó (Nanna) also has inspiring stories. She wanted to leave India in the 60s for many reasons and this was during prohibition where you couldn’t buy or sell alcohol legally. So my Nanna, the shyest person you’ve ever met became a bootlegger. My grandfather worked as a Customs Officer so he would smuggle in bottles of Whiskey from overseas and my avó would on-sell it to buyers which was risky business. She had to hide the money from my Grandfather as he was a gambler. He probably thought she was drinking all that whiskey snd she probably did drink a lot of it! My childhood memories are of my avó and my great grandmother sitting on cane chairs drinking Whiskey and smoking cigarettes. She had to be secretive about their plans to emigrate as she was worried (probably justifiably) that the bank manager would get wind of it and not let her take out the money. Finally, by the time Dad was 14 she had enough money for the family’s fare to Australia on a ship. She went to the bank early in the morning, sat on the step until they opened and quickly withdrew all the money. They had already gotten visas under the white Australia policy which Nan laughs about because they weren’t white. They were Portuguese Indian and brown skinned but obviously by the 60s Australia was getting desperate and let all us heathens in. She told me the story of how they were lined up, interviewed and examined as to how white they were. Sounds crazy but that sort of discrimination and white supremacy is still evident in our immigration policy and politicians today. I wrote a song about this dehumanising practice of putting people in arbitrary boxes called ‘Which part of you?’It stems from being asked annoying questions all the time like ‘Where are you from?’ (well I’m from the Blue Mountains if you must know)! Or which part of you is ethnic and stuff like that. It’s annoying to be reminded all the time that you are ‘other’ which I guess I’m used to, being queer as well. I can say that I am a proud queer with a hybrid cultural identity. We don’t belong anymore in India or Portugal but I definitely don’t identify with mainstream Australian culture either. I love singing in Portuguese and Spanish. I feel it connects me with my Latin and ‘Mestizo’ roots.
There’s one song on the album called ‘Que te quiero’ which is an interesting mix because it is uses a central American beat called Cumbia combined with an eastern European scale in the melody — something I had in my head as we rode from Prague to Budapest on our last cycling trip. Over the melody, I sing ‘how I love you’ in Spanish. It’s a very playful song with funny little electronic sounds that are like voices wanting the last word. Like “I love you”-“no I love you more!” I dedicate that one to Virginia. It’s the only love song on the whole album. The rest are more quirky and more socially critical. I love these cultural mixes. I came to love Latin American beats when I was 18, living in Japan with Latin American friends who were there on working visas because they had some Japanese heritage. I had a Peruvian friend who would set her alarm every morning to her favourite Merengue or salsa song. She’d literally wake up and start dancing next to their bunk beds (the four sisters shared a room). I loved staying over there. She taught me how to dance. That family was literally oozing with a love for life. We partied a lot. I was mesmerised with South American culture and went to live and study in Chile when I was 22. Best year of my life!
I learnt piano as a kid which I am grateful to my parents for. I gave it up at 16 as in the end the technical side of the AMEB program didn’t foster my creativity. I was writing piano music but didn’t have anyone to bounce off or learn from in terms of composing. I came back to piano in my 30s when I moved to Lismore in 2011. My mum gave me the money that she had spent on my sisters home wedding saying something like “You’ll never get married so you can have the same amount” which is funny cause who knew that gay marriage was only 7 years down the track. I don’t really believe in marriage, though I’m glad we have the right to choose. My song Skeleton Waltz explores this whole topic and asks some important questions in a sort of Quentin Tarantino style shoot off with conservatism at the end. So I am grateful that I had a piano. It helped me work through some personal traumas and was a solitary and introspective outlet while my day job was a very extroverted job. It was a great job, making kids laugh and helping them value themselves, their health with the giraffe puppet Healthy Harold. I taught about 5000 kids every year and got to know the entire Bundjalung area from Evans to Woodenbong.”