“Giordano and myself had a collaboration in mind, but we didn’t really know what format it was going to take,” says Farrant. “We knew it was going to be rap based and current affairs based. The comedy angle of it came along a little bit later. We have a really large section of our mutual Venn diagram that incorporates the great political comedians, like Bill Hicks or George Carlin, or UK satirists like Chris Morris or Armando Iannucci.”
But aside from their shared interest in satirical comedians, the decision to portray the characters in the news broadcasts by dressing up in wigs and costumes is what made humour inevitable.
“It became quite clear that this was going to look funny,” Farrant says. “It wasn’t really a conscious decision, ‘Oh, people need to laugh at this stuff,’ but I guess we’d seen it done so well by some of our greatest cultural heroes that when we saw that the show was going to be quite funny looking, we had no problem pursuing that angle.”
Juice Rap News is blatantly humorous, but watching the show doesn’t necessarily make you feel good. Crucially, although these are serious issues that effect real people, Farrant and Nanni shine a light on the absurdity of the situation, rather than the crushing reality.
“We do deliberate a lot about how to deal with complex, and especially delicate, issues in an appropriate and respectful manner,” says Nanni. “At the same time, because of the irreverent and satirical nature of the show, humour is often the best vehicle to help us engage with those complex topics in an effective way. Humour can help to lower people’s defence mechanisms and to dispel our fears. So we don’t think of the relationship between humour and seriousness in terms of tension and opposition; so much as in terms of a symbiosis – a sort of yin and yang action between hilarious and deadly serious.”
Since its conception in late-2009, 32 episodesof Juice Rap News have appeared on YouTube, and there’s now a new episode uploaded every month. There are several moments in each show specifically designed to get people laughing, but they’re careful not to poke fun at victims of tyranny and oppression.
“To laugh at any of the victims of that would be just extremely distasteful. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t laugh at the oppressors and the tyrannists. Those should be the targets of ridicule. The comedy, wherever it comes, is directed at those people. It might be in the form of putting words in their mouth that are extreme truth-telling. We have our militarist character General Baxter – he’s an extreme representative of the military industrial complex. He speaks the truth and he revels in the darkness of the military industrial complex. A lot of the times the humour might come from a bit of shock factor – having a character express such extreme views about oppression and the might-is-right philosophy of geopolitics.”
While Juice Rap News is foremost a musical project, so far they’ve only performed one live show. However, their debut Melbourne show is happening this weekend, as part of the Shadow Electric’s Visions series. Along with the two co-creators/writers and performers, there’ll be a number of special guests involved.
“We’re incredibly lucky to have some amazing people from the local scene. We’ve got Grey Ghost, who used to rap with The Melodics, he’s rapping as a couple of the characters. We’ve also got Mantra. So two of the best MCs in Melbourne, in my opinion Australia. We’ve also got a great female actress, Ellen Burbidge, who’s coming on board to rap with us as well.”
Thanks to the collaboration with Shadow Electric, Juice Rap will have access to the venue’s enormous projector and screen. “We have visuals playing in sync with the music and augmenting the lyrics that are being delivered by the actors. In much the same way as the episode is an all-out assault on the senses visually and auditorily, the same thing is going to happen in this live show. Massive beats out of the speakers and really tight syncing of visuals to those beats. And the lyrics will be delivered live by the actors on stage.”
Despite the somewhat overwhelming nature of the issues that’ll be addressed in the live show, they endeavour to leave the audience with a feeling that there are simple actions we can take to improve these situations.
“Primarily we want people to come and have a really good time and enjoy the music and get together with other people who love hearing discussions about similar issues. But also come away with feelings that there are tools, there are opportunities open to all of us to take really simple steps to addressing these issues.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
