Pez: Festival's Over

‘The Festival Song’ was a blessing and a curse for Melbourne emcee Pez (or Perry Chapman as his birth certificate denotes). While the song was arguably the most popular Oz hip hop release since the Hilltop Hoods released ‘Nosebleed Section’ all those years ago, the song has seen Pez pigeon holed as “that Festival Song dude”. A moniker the young man is all too keen to shake.

“Having a hit song that was all about having fun people start to think, well, that’s who he is, that’s what he’s about and then all the rest of your music gets lost in the process,” says Chapman. "I’ve got a chance to show people where my heart is now.”

The chance that Chapman is referring to is the Line campaign, an endeavour to cut the rate of violence experienced by teenagers and young adults. While it may seem that Chapman is riding the coat tails of the campaign for his own benefit, nothing could be further from the truth. His passion for the campaign and its mission is strikingly obvious when he talks about what the campaign is trying to achieve.

“Someone came to me and asked if I would go down and help out at the launch of the campaign in Sydney and just play a song. They told me that half a million women in Australia get physically or sexually abused every year, which is a scary stat for anyone to think about.” Chapman says. “It's just kinda snowballed since that really.”

Chapman has been lucky enough not to have a firsthand experience of the violence that the afore mentioned statistic refers to. What provoked the attention of the 26 year old is the Line’s push to help everyone build positive relationships with one another.

“For something to manifest to a violent level is scary, but it makes you think about all the other stuff that goes on, you know?” Chapman says. “Just in normal, everyday shit, the way you treat your family, the way you treat your friends, you can build up so much tension which eventually leads to these more dramatic circumstances. That’s the stuff I’m interested in targeting."

The Line aims to push young Australians to consider how their actions and words will affect one another. With the explosion of social networks in their lives, the campaign looks to remind us that our online interactions can often be the point where ‘the line’ is crossed.

“Everything is accelerated now because you’re plugged into this world where everyone is right there, all the time,” Chapman says of social networks. “In the old days it wasn’t like this, if you had a problem with someone you had to go and tell them. Now you can just put it out there and all of sudden you can have 1000 people into it and it goes from zero to a huge deal in no time.”

Anyone who talks to Chapman about his role with the line will quickly realise that he has thrown himself head first into what the campaign is trying to achieve. This is no publicity stunt; this is a young man who actually wants to help.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in life, I’m trying to figure it out as I go to some degree so sometimes my music kinda reflects that,” Chapman admits. “But I wanna do something good as best I can.”

The way the Line aims to tackle the many issues it is trying to minimise seems to fit in well with Chapman’s positive nature. The campaign aims to educate rather than outlaw, looking to make people understand that their action invariably affect other people. Something Chapman believes to be a pleasant change from the slap on the wrist tactics the government usually employs.

“I like that it tries to cut the problem before it starts if that makes sense, promoting that positive relationship. Usually it’s just a bandaid that last two seconds and then everyone gets back to their life and keeps going the same way. The only way to really do anything is to do exactly this, something positive for once.”

As well as performing at the campaign’s Sydney launch, Chapman has offered two of his songs to the campaign website to be used as free downloads. ‘The Festival Song’ and ‘Heavenly’ are available alongside tracks from country music daring Tenielle for visitors to the Line website to obtain at their leisure. Chapman has also been asked for his song ‘Shine’ to feature as the theme song for the campaign.

“Shine was an older song but instead of doing it in a bedroom we got to record it properly this time,” Chapman says with a laugh. “Which is good, because it was meant to be an uplifting song in its sentiment and my lyrics are a bit deeper than in some of my other songs. This new recording gets the emotion to come through a bit more where in the old one it probably didn’t so much.”

Shine is also being featured in a competition for the Line. Visitors to the campaign website can draw a picture, either of themselves or a situation where ‘the line’ has been crossed, the best of which will be put into Shine’s upcoming film clip. The drawings are all drawn with a single line, making for some very creative adaptions of the old self portrait.

“For me, what sparked the idea was about six months ago before any of this happened, this little girl liked Shine, the old one, and she’d written ‘change it for the better’ in the sand. She took a photo of it and sent it to my facebook page,” Chapman explains. “I thought that was phenomenal. It’s cool to try and hopefully get people to send in and be a part of it."

These even murmurings of tour featuring Pez and the other Line artists early next year, but Chapman is wary of planning too far ahead.

“I think I’ve gotta concentrate on phase one at the moment,” laughs Chapman. “Getting the song to sound good, do a video, put it out and push the campaign. Then if it all gets the right vibe and people support it and it all goes to plan then I’d love to do a tour. I’ve fallen victim to that a few times where I start living the dream in my head!”

Whether the tour eventuates or not, Chapman can rest assured that he is a part of something good, even if it is sponsored by the government, a fact that he admits is “a bit weird”. In the end though, Chapman’s personal mission for the campaign is simple.

“If we can get people thinking about how they treat the other person, we’re on the right track."

To enter the Draw Your Line competition, download Pez’s music and check out more about The Line, visit theline.org.au.

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