Krishan Meepe — DIY BABES ZINE

Having One Girl in The Band Doesn’t Make It Diverse

Has punk failed to follow through on its progressive ideologies for over 20 years? Systemic barriers keep marginalized communities out of the underground punk scene; however, a facade of progressivism pushes Black and brown musicians out of the community, and all these dynamics have to be addressed.

Krishan and I chat about this and more throughout the article.

By Billie Estrine

Fri. Aug 2 2024

Credit: Charlie Foster

Where did you grow up?

I grew up a little bit everywhere, mostly in Brisbane, though.

When did you become interested in music?

Damn, that's hard. I've played some kind of instrument since I was five or six. Becoming a music fan and a real music nerd was probably a teenager, maybe about twelve. Triple J had a video show. It was very short-lived; it was called J Play. It was a morning version of Rage, a late-night video program that used to run when I was a kid. It still runs; they run all night, 8 hours or something. They play the weirdest stuff. It was whatever they wanted to do. Now people present it, it's a little more structured. But yeah, Triple J had an hour-long one in the morning, and I would watch that.

Was it music videos?

Yeah, all music videos.

When did you start making music?

Probably in uni, I had to do little high school projects. But uni was when it really started. [I was] playing in bands. I did a music degree, so you had to play in bands. I made stuff then and haven't really stopped.

What was your music degree?

I did a Bachelor of Music at QUT. Queensland University of Technology.

When did you start playing bass, and what other instruments did you play?

Bass, I started playing when I was 14 or 15. Now, I also play guitar, vocals, and production stuff. I make beats and do recordings, all that sort of stuff. I played keyboard when I was really young and trumpet in primary school. Nothing really stuck until I found the bass.

Is your music degree the base for your production and engineering work?

Yeah it is. I did a dual major in production and performance. We had a really good studio at uni and started doing stuff there.

When did your interest in music begin to blend with an interest in the culture and or history of music?

I grew up on hip-hop and punk rock. Those are both very politically charged music movements, which drew me to them. Particularly being a brown person in Australia, particularly in Brisbane. It's one of the most racist places in the world, probably. At least one of the most racist places in Australia, and I think Australia is one of the most racist places in the world. So, that's what I say about Brisbane.

Hearing people speak truth to power, particularly American hip-hop [and] Black rights, drew me in. I was pretty young when I first got into music as a teenager. Then, I did an Ethnomusicology Honours, basically music anthropology, in 2018- 19. That's when I really dug into the nuances of it and got academic with it.

When did you start becoming involved in community radio?

In 2013, the last year of my music degree, I was in Brisbane [and] 4ZZZ Radio, which is the big community radio station there. It was actually the first community radio station in the country; they had a really radical history. They're a cool station. It's not quite what it used to be, but it was still a cool station.

I did a music internship there, processing new releases and submissions and putting them in the music library. I started doing reviews, and then I did gig reviews and took photos. I did that for a couple of years, and then I moved to Melbourne. Then I got involved with 3RRR [in] 2021. I started doing Graveyards then, and now I have my own show.

You mentioned it briefly, but when was your introduction to the Naarm/Melbourne underground music scene?

I moved here in 2017. So I've been here a little while now, and I didn't really start playing music straight away. Everyone from Brisbane moves to Melbourne. So, I had a bunch of friends. But, I don't know, had falling outs or people moved away. It took me a little while to find my feet. I was playing in a few bands. I was playing in one band, which didn't work out quickly.

Eventually, I found my feet by going to uni. In 2018, it was like halfway through 2018. I finished and graduated right into the 2020 pandemic. So, I was looking to start a band or get into music again in that way, and it got delayed. I started playing in a band at the end of 2021. Yep, in 2021, I started doing a project with my friend, and it took us a year to get everything together and start playing.

What impact has the community of the underground scene had on you?

Lots, there's personal stuff, there's political stuff, musical influences. What do you want to know about?

The personal and the political.

Politically, it's been known as a safe space for all the weirdos and the leftovers. There's a big queer community in the punk scene, and I guess I just got to be a part of all that. Getting to know all the politics that comes with being around people from marginalized groups opens your eyes to a lot of stuff. I was already around that, thinking about it, but being part of the punk scene here is a little bit different than just knowing [things]. When you're actually around people and having to support your friends through stuff. Even learning to use nonbinary pronouns when I moved here was a big deal; it's become much more aware in the last 5-10 years.

Particularly coming from Brisbane, which is backward, to coming here and unlearning language and learning new things was all really eye-opening. It's like, I'm in the big city now! I learned heaps of stuff, for sure. It definitely changed my politics and radicalized me even more.

Personally, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. Had a nasty double band breakup at the end of last year. I lost some friends, which kind of tainted my association with the scene and how I feel about it in general. A big one being that there are no brown people in the punk scene here, and there's a reason for that. It makes me think these politics of radical progressivism that are really touted as the be-all and end-all, and we're holding a light for that, are somewhat performative in a lot of ways. Not always, I think the queer community, the queer scene, they're much more inclusive of that. Punk hasn't really stepped up in the last like 20 years. It's not as radical as they would like to think.

As much as I don't want to admit it on a personal level, it made me want to live this life that was more, "fuck you, man, I'm never getting a job, and I'm just living the way I want to live." Then suddenly, all the rent went up, and everyone is poor. You can't make those decisions anymore; you just have to get a job. When [something like that happens], you don't get looked out for in the same way that other people who might be white do. It says something.

Within the community? Or, I mean, obviously within society, but within the community?

Yeah, within the community as well. I don't think it's super obvious. It's not like people are outwardly racist. It's a little more insidious behind-the-scenes identity politics that is super prevalent. I can't speak for all the other scenes, but it seems particularly pointed with the punk scene here. I don't have the whole thesis; my friend Isobel actually has written a thesis about it.

Whoa!

Yeah, which is about to come out. She's just finished her master's. But it's something a lot of us think about: the performativity element.

Can you tell me more about that?

Yeah, I think it's easy to be tokenized. There are still a lot of bands that are just all-white dudes. It's pretty hard to get away with a whole lineup that's just all dude bands. But they will get away with the lineup that's just got one woman out of all three bands. They're not even the front person, but they're ticking the quota box, and it does feel like that with people of colour as well, sometimes. Not just myself but multiple other people I know have been in bands, and they'll be the only person of colour in the audience and leave the scene for one reason or another.

What are the distinctions between documenting culture as a journalist and critiquing it through creating art as a musician?

That's tough. Journalism can just be [a] critique; it's easy from that side. You're not really tapped into the same meaning that art-making has for people who are artists. It's often your life that you're sharing and putting out there, and it's really vulnerable. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of work. Making a record takes, however many months of songwriting and months of recording and putting a band together. It's a lot of work.

When you're a journalist, you just write an article. It takes, I don't know, a couple weeks or maybe a month; it's really different. It's easy for them to comment on culture, whereas, for artists, it's so much more intense, not just in the sense of making music but also in being part of the scene. Supporting your friends' bands, getting influenced by them, and getting up to stuff at the end of the night with the other bands in the bill or just the friends you go to a show with are really important to people's lives. It seems a lot more meaningful when you're on that side, but you also don't get the benefit of distance and reflection; you're just kind of in it.

Why is it important for you to be involved in both journalism and music?

Making music feels like something I have to do. I've struggled with that question before. On one level, it's something I need to do to keep myself sane. I've spent a lot of my life learning and loving music and to then not put that to use feels kind of defeating. It feels really important to me and who I am to make music.

To write about music was almost not really something I anticipated. When I went to do my honours in ethnomusicology, a band didn't work out, and then I was playing in a cover band to just try and make some money, and that also didn't really work out for a little bit. It slowly went nowhere, and I got a little fed up and thought I had to move on.

So, I went to uni and thought ethnomusicology sounded cool. Through that, I learnt why music is important to people, society, and culture, and I didn't see that coming. Then, that became really important and reinvigorated my love for music. I'd written about music before, but it was more [about] helping bands get some publicity, doing reviews, and more general baseline gig reviews. That was also the way I found music, I was always trawling internet forums, and I'd read AllMusic and a little bit of Pitchfork; all those big music publications were so much more important when I was a teen. It was cool to do that stuff, but now it definitely reinvigorated the way I like to look at music totally.

Can you tell me more about your background studying ethnomusicology? Are you an ethnomusicologist?

I did my honours, and then I was thinking about going on to further study, but I got really bad feedback from the review panel because it was writing about race, and they were not used to that. My supervisor literally said, "Ignore this, it's just bullshit." Then I got published without really even trying. I actually got asked to be published in a journal. I was the only contributor with an honours; everyone else had a PhD. It's pretty uncommon for that to happen. So, it did seem like my research was relevant and resonating. But I was still a little bit turned off by that initial experience. Also, it was 2020, and [I] was never going to do online study. I didn't go forward with that. I'm reconsidering it now that we're sort of past that phase of pandemic stuff.

I like to say I'm an ethnomusicologist. On my radio show, I'm starting to do more cultural analysis, which has always been something I rant about; and what else is ethnomusicology?

It's that! So I was going to ask, how do those ideas that you explored in your honors and that you explore through ethnomusicology frame the narratives of Culture Shock, your radio show on 3RRR, community radio?

When I started presenting, I think everyone has this experience; it's hard to know what to say. You have heaps to say about music [when you're chatting] stuff with your friends. [Then] you put a mic on, and your brain goes blank. I started leaning into that background and analyzing music, and it slowly became apparent that other people weren't doing that. I had that, so I just lent to it more and more and [found] it really fun. [There are] not many other times when you can ad nauseam tell your opinion and analyze music without anyone saying anything. I just get to have my say. So it's fun.

Pic via Krishan, DIY studio space

Pic via Krishan, bedroom turned into drum tracking space for the Nervous Tension EP

You're also a producer and sound engineer, as we've talked about. What's the importance of these skills in your underground music endeavors?

I think recording, being able to record, is one of the most important skills for musicians these days. It's so difficult to get the resources to get studio time in a professional studio. Sing Sing, one of the major studios in Melbourne, closed down a couple years ago. It's where Cat Power recorded Moon Pix. Yeah, it's [was an] amazing studio, [with] amazing sounds [and a] great vibe. They're not the only [ones who have] felt the burden of how difficult it is to record here now.

Being able to do it yourself is kinda what everyone is doing. Particularly, the next generation seems to be leaning towards more solo electronic music, which you can do in your bedroom, and I think that's part of the reason. Yeah, it's hugely important. When you're talking about underground music, where there's even less money, you just gotta do everything yourself, and knowing how to record is a huge part of that. To be able to put music out.

Check out Krishan’s creative projects: https://linktr.ee/KrishanMeepe

Billie Estrine

Naarm/Melbourne, Australia

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