REPRESENT A

There is something seriously lacking in Dunedin. And no, it’s not just the scarcity of our venues. Something is miss-ing, if you will.

Since the 1980s, the Dunedin Sound has been dominated by male voices. Right now the genre is still defined by surf-rock or alternative-indie sounds, which have become synonymous with the male voice to the point where Critic’s 2018 quiz ‘Which Dunedin Sound band are you?’ led straight from “there is a woman in my band” to “you are not a part of the Dunedin Sound.”

But that’s not entirely true; there have been plenty of iconic women that have carved out a place on this masculine stage, like Natasha Griffiths, Lesley Paris of Look Blue Go Purple, and Jane Dodd of The Chills. Still, breaking into the Dunedin music scene for women is harder than a Pint Night glass to the head: hard, painful and leaves you feeling pretty bruised. The fact we’ve got fuck-all venues and a culture of casual sexism also doesn’t help, meaning women go undervalued and underplayed.

Kaia Kahurangi Jamieson has been on the music scene for almost a year now, performing as the vocalist and guitarist of alternative band The Daze and indie-surf rock band The Audio Visual Dropkicks. She’s a newcomer, but in her short time Kaia has faced no shortage of sexism. And despite feeling like her male mates want to support her, and despite culture generally moving in a better direction, she’s often stopped to wonder: would this have happened if she were a dude?

Kaia has always been a musician, singing and playing guitar since the age of 10, born to parents who used to be in bands during their university years. Growing up in Auckland, Kaia said that there weren’t a lot of student bands. But after seeing a Dale Kerrigan gig in her first year, Kaia says she thought that Ashley, the band's lead singer, was the “coolest person in the world,” and she started to pursue her own projects. “I wanted to write surf-rock music, but I thought in order to get into the scene I would have to do something similar [to Dale Kerrigan] because there were no girls at U Bar gigs, they were only ever at The Crown,” she says.

But the stars aligned for Kaia when her friend Max, who plays in Hot Sauce Club, reached out to her asking if she wanted to play a gig. Naturally, Kaia agreed, thinking that the new world of live performances in Dunedin was going to be filled with more up-and-coming Dale Kerrigans. But when she rocked up to soundcheck she realised that, out of the three bands present, there was only one other girl. Kaia felt even more deflated when she realised the other girl and her band wasn't ever going to stick around to play a show. “There were only two other bands, and there were only guys there when we sound checked,” says Kaia. “I don’t remember ever soundchecking with another woman.” This year's Hyde Street Party was a turning point for her, saying a particular moment after getting off stage made her realise “how underlyingly sexist the Dunedin rock scene is.”