By Tanya Steele
Complicated feelings, hard work and a continued passion for arts and advocacy have seen a long-standing presence in the marginalised music community take out a state award.
Local musician Saint Ergo recently took out the 2024 Arts Access Victoria Amplify Award in early November as part of the Music Victoria Awards held every year.
Saint Ergo said winning the award brought up complicated feelings
“ I’m absolutely overjoyed – I didn’t realise it actually meant as much to me as I thought,” she said.
Nominees for this year’s award included Among the Restless, Magdalia, Naavikaran and R.em.edy and this is the fourth year for the award which runs in partnership with Music Victoria.
Having been nominated before the artist said they felt some of the fresher faces might take out the top spot.
“They are all wonderful people who I love and really want to see their music careers thrive,” Saint Ergo said.
“Here I am at 52 having been doing this for a very long time – It’s very easy for the jadedness to set in,” she said.
“I’ve spent probably the last 30 years trying to work in this industry and I have been thrown a lot of barriers.”
Although the climate of the music industry has improved in Saint Ergo’s time, she said that there was this kind of palpable sense of relief and joy in receiving the recent accolade, but said she also thought to herself – it’s about time (with a laugh).
“I have had a longer journey – I needed to really go through all of the processes of healing and finding myself from a quite difficult background,” she said.
Walking the stage to receive the award saw a sparkling sequin gowned Saint Ergo, complete with noise cancelling headphones and her weighted therapy plushie named Periwinkle step up to make her speech on the night.
“The crowd was just really quite amazing and supportive and very, very raucous – I just felt proud to be me, you know, proud to be autistic, proud to be a trans woman, proud to be, a single parent and proud to be old,” she said.
Saint Ergo said that while receiving the award has been very validating, a lot of hard work went in leading up to it.
“Things are paying off,” she said.
The artist has recently worked on a number of projects with the ABC and will be featured in the show Headliners which airs on 19 November.
Fronted by Elly-May Barnes, who is a musician and passionate advocate for inclusion, access, and equality, the show will see two bands composed entirely of musicians with disabilities take the stage of a major music festival.
“The show is about accessibility in the music industry,” said Saint Ergo.
“It’s a beautiful idea and I was asked to come and do a short piece on accessibility on stage,” she said.
The artist did an interview for the show and also performed at The Howler in Brunswick and said it will highlight the different needs that people with a disability have in terms of accessibility.
“It’s not just wheelchair access – although that’s very poorly catered for,” she said.
“They don’t pay attention to things like sensory needs very well – you need to ask the person who has the needs, then design the space.”
More locally, Saint Ergo also performed at Tecoma Uniting Church on two occasions, once for the inaugural Voices from the Edge event and the more recent Twilight Marker on Sunday 17 November.
For Voices from the Edge artists such as Fleassy Malay and The Blurred Lines delivered spoken word poetry and live music along with Saint Ergo performing their R&B baroque style pop performance – the artist said the event is going to be yearly and it was absolutely incredible.
“It was one of my favourite gigs this year,” Saint Ergo said.
“The whole day was a conversation and gave artists from the margins a platform,” she said.
“We had all these wonderful questions from the audience that nobody would have even thought of, and it was just this beautiful moment of simpatico and of changing hearts – seeing a trans person as a human being.”
With more gigs on the horizon, Saint Ergo will continue her journey as a neurodivergent, transgender and queer artist, navigating the pathway of writing, producing and releasing music.
“I still make music because it is a way that I can access the community for myself and share my art form – but also be a bridge to community and try to try to connect and that’s important to me,” she said.
