Mettaphor...still passionate about their music

If you are going to be musical collaborators playing in the same band for eighteen years, you had better love what you do. Which is exactly why Angelika Heinrich and Kaeleen Hunter – currently playing as Mettaphor - are still passionate about their music, their journey and the possibilities for the future almost twenty years since they started playing together.

These gifted women share a deep love of creating and sharing their songs and of connecting with a wide and varied community. Their skills, honed over many thousands of gigs around the world, have enabled Mettaphor to achieve a rare and precious thing – to make their living entirely from writing and performing original music.

Kaeleen and Angelika have evolved alongside their music. They began in the tortured realm of acoustic angst, flowed through a harmony drivenfolk-troubadour phase and into a more political time of left-wing social issues and women’s rights and then went all soft and reflective for their ‘ambient period’. Then came ‘nu jazz’ and from that grew their current incarnation as soul sisters pumping out sweet and funky tunes. These women have embraced each new style with their trademark enthusiasm, just as they have embraced new developments in technology which allow their musical horizons to be constantly expanded.

The one thing that's never wavered throughout their collaboration Is Hunter and Heinrich’s solid belief in original music and the power of that music to connect people. Mettaphor play festivals, gatherings, marketplaces, nightclubs and cafes at a pace that would make most of us swoon. As well as this amazing gig schedule in Australia they have toured extensively in the United States and New Zealand and in a visit to Europe during 2010 they were delighted by the number of aspiring female musicians who went crazy for their funky style.

Kaeleen and Angelika also spend time in remote Indigenous communities as Live Vibe Music – sharing their skills and helping young folk to create music and learn how to use film and video as a way of communicating their stories and opening up creativity. The girls’ belief in the power of music to restore the spirit and provide a space for community expression gives incredible strength and value to these projects.

Over the last four years Angelika and Kaeleen have taken off for months on end to the ‘Top End’ of Australia – from Cairns to Ningaloo Reef and everywhere in between. This year sees them heading to Perth and beyond (there’s been nothing like it since they crossed the Leyland Brothers with Annie Lennox & Prince). Who knows? They could even turn up in your back yard.

To find out more about this iconic duo, log on to their website www.mettaphor.com or, better still, go along to one of their gigs and feel it for yourself.

written by: Tracy Barnes (freelance writer specialising in Arts & Culture)