Dunedin-based rapper Rona Wignall, aka Arcee, is heading overseas for a month-long tour. Photo/Peter McIntosh
Dunedin-based rapper Rona Wignall, aka Arcee, is heading overseas for a month-long tour. Photo/Peter McIntosh
A Dunedin rapper is about to take huge step in her career, performing at a Hamburg festival that has attracted 75,000 people before touring Germany and Sweden with American rap artists.
Rona Wignall, aka Arcee, said German promoters were flying her to Europe to tour in Germany and Switzerland in July.
She will be first performing on June 30 at the counterculture music and arts Fusion Festival in front of some of its audience of 75,000.
After that, she will be on the road opening for American rappers Bleubird and Ceschi on their European tour.
That will mean gigs in cities from Frankfurt and Oberhausen in Germany to Winterthur and Zurich in Switzerland in a 10-day period in July.
Wignall said she heard just a few weeks ago she would be heading overseas for the festival.
She was then asked to open a tour with the American rappers.
Wignall gained $10,000 of New Zealand on Air funding early last year to make a music video, and in August last year released her debut album, The Arcee LP,
She said she had worked in New Zealand two years ago with Off The Radar, Hamburg promoters who put on festivals all over the world, performing at a festival north of Auckland.
The promoters said at the time she should come to Germany, but she responded: "Oh yeah, lol, when I'm famous.
"I'll come over, like, when I'm big.''
That joke had turned into reality.
About three weeks ago, the promoters asked if she wanted to fly to Hamburg.
"Now I'm off, man, in a month.''
Accommodation and flights had all been organised for what she described as "a big opportunity''.
"It's pretty rare that a female rapper from New Zealand gets the opportunity to tour Europe with an American rap group.
"I'm still, like, is this happening? It feels unreal. I'm excited. I can't wait to go.''
Wignall said she had performed two shows in Manchester, where she was born, on a family visit there, but "this will be the real test''.
