How Diplo Brought Music Lessons to Rural Australia

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We all love listening to music, but making it is a privilege enjoyed by few. While that's often down to complete lack of ability—at least in my case—there are other barriers in place too. For young people in Australia's isolated rural communities, those weekly childhood piano lessons that middle class city kids take for granted are non-existent. Which is why Sydney's Heaps Decent, an organisation running youth music and art workshops in country towns and juvenile detention centres, is so important.

The unlikely story of Heaps Decent begins with EDM. Ten years ago, just as his star was beginning to rise off the back of a high profile collaboration with MIA, the producer Diplo embarked on an Australian tour. As Heaps Decent's Charlie O'Brien tells VICE, the musician was generous enough to see an opportunity where few touring artists had before.

"When Diplo was travelling through Australia he expressed interest in doing a workshop with Indigenous Australian people," O'Brien explains. "And through some of our contacts we helped make it happen."

Diplo's initial workshop took place in a small community centre just north east of Darwin. Following the tour, he decided to leave behind his production and recording gear for the kids to continue using. The move inspired his friends and fellow DJs Nina Las Vegas and Andrew Levins to co-found the Heaps Decent project. They've been helping run workshops, sometimes with various celebrity guests, ever since.

Heaps Decent's operation has since expanded to accommodate for all genres of music, as well as multimedia arts practices and even experiments in virtual reality. "In the music workshops we basically sit down with the young people that we're working with, whether it be in a juvenile detention centre or a remote community centre or a school, and sort of figure out what kind of music they like and what kind of song they'd like to work on," O'Brien explains. "Along the way we engage them through beatmaking, songwriting, writing lyrics and then recording."

The organisation caters for different modes of expression. House music and hip hop are popular genres in the bush, and O'Brien encourages the latter because it's accessible to anyone. "A lot of the music generated is hip hop because it's a pretty good vehicle for expression in a simple format that's not super daunting. You don't have to be a great singer, but it does involve in-depth lyrics and is also a form of poetry, really." They've also helped record acoustic guitar ballads and some gabber-style bush techno.

The best songs get played on a weekly segment on Sydney's FBI radio station, and Heaps Decent have fostered the talent of several young artists who have gone onto greater success. "We have a couple of kids we're championing at the moment. One goes by the name of Ravin, he's doing this really incredible soulful rap—and he's got a really strong ear for the direction of his beats, too. We've given him a fair bit of airplay on FBI and every single one of his songs has been played on Triple J too," says O'Brien.

For many kids, a Heaps Decent session will be their first music lesson ever. And while they won't all become hip hop legends, that's beside the point. "A lot of the kids will have their own taste in music, and listen to music quite extensively," O'Brien says. "But for a lot of the young people we work with it's the first time they've made a song or been hands on in the music-making process. And it might also be the first time they've done something they can really be proud of and take home. It's a piece of work they can keep."

Getting to hang with celebrities is pretty cool too. Diplo, MIA, Chairlift, Aloe Blacc, A-Trak, Lykke Li—the list goes on. "A lot of young people in say a juvenile detention centre or a remote community, they might not have ever met someone from America or the UK before. And they're absolutely awestruck by their accent and their life experience. The musicians can impart knowledge and fill in the gaps that we can't necessarily always fill."

It doubles as a great experience for the guest artists as well.

"They really enjoy it. A bunch of them have requested to come back and have another workshop with us. When you're taking one of your only spare days in Sydney during your tour to come out and travel with us to a juvenile detention centre in Campbelltown, that's really special. Someone like A-Trak?, I think he's done like three or four workshops with us now. We're very grateful."

A musician himself, O'Brien says being part of the Heaps Decent project since 2009 has opened him up to the immense possibility of Australia's underground. "It gives me perspective on how much really great music there is out there, still yet to be heard. It gives me hope too, because there are these young people who aren't paying for really expensive PR campaigns, they don't have major labels behind them, but they can still get their music out there and heard on Triple J and FBI and things like that. It's pretty inspiring."

Unfortunately, with the high travel costs of shipping musicians and equipment around Australia, the future of Heaps Decent isn't assured. "We had a tumultuous last year in terms of funding. It's a constant, absolute struggle to say the very least," says O'Brien. If the project feels like something you want to support, head along to the organisation's fundraising art auction on September 27 in Surry Hills—the future of Australia's next country town Diplo is in your hands.

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