Why Tina Arena champions Support Act

Singer-songwriter Tina Arena, ahead of her being honoured at the annual fundraising event Music in the House. Picture: John Feder.

At the annual Music in the House fundraiser, held last week in Sydney, singer-songwriter Tina Arena was the guest of honour. She received the excellence in community award, joining previous recipients such as Archie Roach, Jenny Morris and Paul Kelly.

“It’s beautiful to be recognised for an industry that you’ve been standing up for, from the artist’s perspective, for a long time,” Arena told me at the conclusion of the event, which raised $210,000 for music industry charity Support Act.

“That recognition was important because I feel that the psyche of an artist is something that is greatly misunderstood. There’s a great deal of insensitivity that comes with being in the job; the constant scrutiny and judgment is something that people don’t understand the effects of.

“There’s some serious mental health issues, and a lot of people in the arts suffer that because they have a very heightened sensibility that absolutely does not correlate with the society and the world that we live in today, where the religion is economy and money. Our religion [as artists] is not economy and money; our religion is about creating an extension of what it is that we do and who we are. That then gets translated into an economic template — and a very poor one at that. There’s absolutely no sense of security. No one’s paying you a regular wage. You’re constantly being judged.

“So it can bring a lot of fragility out in human beings. It makes me very angry when people have this perspective that musicians are leading these kinds of inaccessible lives. It’s absolute rubbish. I’ve spent over 20 years as an artist; I’m not on the poverty line but I certainly wasn’t making any money [at the start of my career]. I was living at home, and thank god my parents provided me with a roof over my head, which enabled me to then be able to work, even if I wasn’t earning any money.

“But there are kids and people that don’t have that reality; they don’t have the support of the family, they don’t have a roof, therefore they’ve got to work, they’ve got to eat, and a lot of them end up on the street. When somebody doesn’t have that kind of strength, it unfortunately attracts a predatory kind of behaviour, which is everything that I despise. I will call it out, and I do call it out, because I’m sick to death of seeing beautiful people — regardless of whether they’re in the arts or not — being preyed upon. It’s just not right.

“Support Act is a charity that’s really important for the artistic community. Could you imagine how freaking miserable we’d all be without the arts?”

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