An initiative to bring music to the streets of Canberra is set to roll out around town on Wednesday, quite literally.
From 11am until 3pm, a bright pink, 15-tonne, ex-military truck known as the Soul Defender will be driving around the city blasting nothing, but Canberran beats from its speakers.
The Soul Defender comes complete with a stage, sound system, lights, bubbles, and batteries, and aims to harness the power of Canberran creativity.
It’s run by the company that owns the Soul Defender, Dionysus, and is part of Operation: CBR Sonic Odyssey, which not only marks International Make Music Day but also hopes to amplify some of Canberra’s local talent and share it city-wide.
Dionysus Event Manager Jordan Hodge said the team were trying to come up with something interesting to do for Make Music Day this year.
“We’ve done a couple of events for make music day before and we wanted to involve the soul defender,” he said.
“I think one of the things we get stuck with sometimes is always activating the same spaces and going to the same places, because they’re easy to do right. They’re really easy to roll the truck in there, so we thought ‘let’s go to some new places within Canberra.’”
When discussing the playlist, Jordan revealed some interesting details about the curative process they used when picking the songs.
“We have put together this incredible playlist of Canberra-made music which has been submitted by the public through our Instagram and social channels,” he said, “which essentially we’re just going to roll around Canberra playing this incredible playlist to add to that as well we’re going to make some stops at some pretty random places that you wouldn’t really expect the soul defender to rock up.”
The Soul Defender will begin its route in Queanbeyan, before doing an anti-clockwise loop of the capital, finally concluding its trip in Fyshwick.
You can learn more about the Soul Defender here.
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