Urban mantras force for good

By REBECCA BARRY

Trey is certainly not the first hip-hop artist to spend time in a detention centre. But she might just be the first one to enjoy it.

The Fijian-Australian long ago decided to use her profile for the benefit of community work, a vocation made all the more credible by her short stint in jail as a teenager.

The experience is now just one of the yarns she spins on her dub-infused second album, Tapastry Tunes. And when she's not encouraging her listeners to make more of themselves in her uplifting, motivational urban mantras, she runs a female-only hip-hop programme through South Sydney Youth Services and music courses for disenfranchised young people at Parramatta's Switch multimedia and digital arts access workshop.

Last year, she went to Britain to visit London community access centres.

Is she too good to be true? The co-ordinators of the programme think so. They say it's thanks to Trey's involvement that Switch received a quarter of a million in funding from the NSW government.

"I feel artists have a responsibility when you're given that platform," the softly spoken musician explains. "You have to say what you feel and stand up for your rights."

In return for the dirty work she gets inspiration for her music, penning rhymes about "things that are negative to Australians: mandatory sentencing and you know just, kids not, you know, knowing their rights and yeah, things like that. Also, like, the detention centre thing that's happening in Sydney, in Australia, I'm pretty against that, yeah. Mainly because of the way these kids are being treated in the detention centres, innocent kids treated like criminals."

On her website she is equally bold in her thoughts on the US Government's international relations. "Unfortunately we're about to go to war, all because of a bunch of men eager to flex their power and their toys to gain access to oil, at the expense of innocent lives. Can you believe that this shit still happens, and we let it? Raise your voice, join the marches, let our government know we do not support the killing of innocent people.

"I try to be positive," she says. "I want to be able to share positive music. I like to listen to stuff that's motivating and makes me think."

The rewards have been opportunities to support some of her genre's more socially conscious artists: Michael Franti, the Roots, Blackalicious and the Fugees, and pilgrimages to New York, the birthplace of hip-hop, and arts mecca San Francisco.

Every two years she heads home to Fiji, not to perform, but to "chill out, get away from everything. It recharges the batteries and gives me more ideas for writing."

It was there Thelma "Trey" Thomas spent her formative years, emigrating with her family to Sydney just before high school. Her first gig was in front of the church congregation and she spent much of her youth emulating her gospel-singer father, writing poetry, listening to reggae and island music and the likes of Public Enemy, Rock Steady Crew, the Beastie Boys, plus old funk and soul records.

"We were always singing around the house and I guess that laid down the foundation for my vocals," says the self-taught singer. "I've always wanted to be involved in music, ever since I was a child. I got offered this open mic gig in '95 and people were just spinning out over my freestyling and stuff. I thought, 'Hey, maybe I could do this'."

She sheepishly remembers her first rhymes were delivered in a put-on American accent. "Hip-hop is like, a self expression and for me to rap in another accent wouldn't be true to myself."

Her Fijian pride is obvious, yet unlike our flourishing Polynesian hip-hop scene - Nesian Mystik, Scribe, Mareko, King Kapisi, Che Fu - she finds it difficult to network with like-minded Aussies. The hip-hop trail is still being blazed in Australia, she says, somewhat in awe of the strength of our scene. "I'd like to do more Islander-inspired music. It's a part of who I am and I just want to be out there."

BDO Performance

* What: Big Day Out, Ericsson Stadium, today

* Who: Trey, Fijian-Australian hip-hop artist

* Where & when: Hip-Hop Stage, 6.45-7.30pm

* nzherald.co.nz will feature updates throughout the day from the Big Day Out beginning at 12pm on Friday.