“Moving to Lismore from Sydney was the best decision I ever made. I got to love the region and the kids. I also got a LOT of love from the kids. I had thank you notes and drawings and cuddles coming at me left, right and centre. Faces lit up and there would be a collective cry “Jess is here!” I only had to say a word and kids would crack up. I did this hilarious job for five years and then my health couldn’t take any more of being in an enclosed space. I was exhausted. My quiet, withdrawn side was crying out for some peace.
While doing this job I joined the Lismore Ukulele Group and discovered singing and playing basic chords in a large safe group lead by Jeanti St Claire. I met my partner Virginia Seymour there. We started up a quintet called the Ukulesbos llater renamed the ‘Mother Pluckers’ with Gemma, Tree and Vonnie. Vonnie now plays in our band the Gravediggers and Havoc. I am grateful that both these musical groups brought Virginia and I together. Virginia is an ex chef (yum)! and now Environmental Scientist / Bush Regenerator. I have learnt a lot from her about the local environment and the tragedy of white settlers who almost completely wiped out the subtropical rainforest (Big Scrub) that used to cover what are now grassy hills devoid of trees and filled with weeds. I taught a history unit at the Channon school a while ago and saw photos of the loggers sending massive logs downstream on the river. Settlers were only given stolen land if they agreed to clear it, so it was a deliberate strategy of ‘controlling’ the land that wasn’t theirs to take in the first place. This, along with the massacres I read about in Rivers of blood is the true history of our region. I feel personally very sad about it and am reminded of it every time I drive through the landscape.
The second song on my album is called Australia Day and Other Harms. It is born from stories I read when we were cycling in Tasmania about the first encounter Indigenous locals had with white people there, how they lay their spears down to welcome the newcomers in. We repay indigenous generosity and kindness of spirit by celebrating on a day that should be one of mourning for the injustices and the genocide that has happened here. It’s not right. This is not an issue our Indigenous family and friends should have to tackle alone, it is one for all of us. Our nation is built on a lot of blood.
I released the album in June last year. I reached out to others to help and support me. I had friends doing sound, door and décor and the Dreamtime Divas supported me by performing, which was so amazing. I love their work and what they stand for. My creative roots are in drag and character comedy so I totally dig them. When I lived in Sydney, I used to organise and MC Smutty Salsa as part of Mardi Gras at the Sly Fox in Enmore – it was for mixed audiences but put on by queer women, we did some really out there, funny performances. I managed to convince local talent Arte Gitana Flamenco to perform at the launch. Our guitarist Helen is taught by Mark Bromley who is part of Arte Gitana Flamenco. I don’t play guitar but am in awe of his skill. Serena too, she is such a skilled and passionate Famenca. Really stoked she and Meg were a part of it. I reached out to Ray Arnott who I work with at school and Laura Nobel. They have both won awards for their work with local Aboriginal kids and I love their jazz and what they stand for. It was exciting to have big names in the national and local music scene wanting to be part of the launch. The launch had the theme of ‘Playing Dead’ after the title of the album and people were so creative in how they interpreted that. Seriously amazing costumes. So much love was poured into that night by everyone that came.
The album name ‘Playing Dead’ has multiple meanings for me. I lived so many years with depression and anxiety. Playing and creating is what has saved my life and kept me going through despair and paranoia. Through accepting my shadow and what I have previously and wrongly considered weak sides of myself. The over emotional, the shy, the sensitive, the introverted, the phobic, the paranoid sides of myself, I have been able to push through and stop these aspects of myself from controlling all of me. Music is pretty cool in that it values and makes use of ALL the parts of ourselves. When I hear all that talk about positive psychology I think it is so shallow and lacking in empathy for what it really means to live through violence, to live through mental illness, to live through intergenerational trauma, to live through racism and sexism and the need to work ourselves into the ground under our capitalist system. We are not to blame for struggling and feeling crazy. For me, music is a radical way to challenge inherited values around security, risk adversity, practicality and on and on. I also just love singing, writing songs and performing so I am following my heart and am finally in a financial position to back myself and my art through teaching.
My main support for the album has been my good friend Cam who I met through teaching in primary schools. He is an outstanding all round musician (think Luxul and Usurper) who listens to my work and makes production recommendations that are spot on. His help has been the encouragement and validation I needed as an insecure, emerging musician. I am very grateful for this musical angel living down the road. I’ve also got a costume angel in the form of Maude Boate of Drag royalty down the road!
I am reminded that a little over two years ago I didn’t even know how to hold a mic or plug in musical equipment. I certainly didn’t know how to use a computer to make music. I used to listen to the inside sleeve and dream about making my own music. Now I’m doing it all in my living room. I’m pretty proud of myself right now. This year my focus is to make some money and head to Melbourne and Brisbane to spread my music to other places and expand my networks and fan base. I have applied for some CreateNSW funding which I hope I will get. I am also making a music video for a new song called ‘Dark Clown’ with my artist friend Salem H. Powderly. I love their work. It’s so different, it has a lot of transgender and gender bending themes. But also fantasy elements which I love. We make a great team.
I am very lucky to have moved to this community as I have been supported in so many ways, through the great specialist health services in the area, the queer community and Tropical Fruits and through meeting other musos who have been so generous with their knowledge and time. I got into producing / recording music through doing the Shiny Shiny Ableton course. During that course I produced my song the Birderer which is on the album. I wrote it about my friend Scary D who is a gentle vegetarian soul but kept accidentally running into countless birds in her van. The perils of country driving.”
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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.”
