Australia’s best performing artists and music professionals celebrated the 2024 Australian Women in Music Awards in Brisbane on Wednesday night. Icons including Sarah Blasko, Katie Noonan, Mo’Ju and Kasey Chambers took to the stage in an extraordinary evening of performances and commemorations.
Hosts Yumi Stynes with Sarah McLeod paid tribute to the 21 award winners, including a posthumous Honour Roll acknowledgement to the late Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE, which was accepted on her behalf by her granddaughter, Natasha Bonynge. Widely considered as one of the greatest sopranos of all time, Dame Sutherland died in October 2010 after an illustrious international opera career spanning several decades.
Patricia ‘Little Pattie’ Amphlett OAM was also inducted to the AWMA Honour Roll for her advocacy and service as the National President of Australia’s Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the Federal Executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and the vice-president of Actors’ Equity.
Country music star Kasey Chambers was bestowed with the Universal Music Australia Lifetime Achievement Award. On Instagram, the 48-year old singer songwriter said she was “honoured” to win the award, adding: “There was so much heartfelt love & support in that room that I am extremely grateful for.”
Chambers has just released her second book, Just Don’t Be a D**khead and Other Profound Things I’ve Learnt, while her thirteenth career album, Backbone, is out tomorrow (October 4).
She is also touring the country in the first half of 2025, travelling to regional performance venues including the Goldfields Arts Centre in Kalgoorlie, Esperance Civic Centre, The Cube in Campbelltown and The Showroom Country Club in Launceston.
Rock ‘n’ roll’s first female roadie, Tana Douglas won the Live Production Touring Award, flying from her base in Los Angeles to accept the award in Brisbane.
Douglas is recognised as the world’s first female roadie having worked with some of rock ‘n’ roll’s biggest acts over the past thirty years, including ACDC, Suzie Quatro, Iggy Pop, Ozzy Osbourne and The Who. In 2021, Douglas published a memoir, Loud, which chronicled her life working behind the stage, starting when she was just 15.
The Sony Music Australia Artistic Excellence Award was won by Mo’Ju, who now has two AWMA awards after winning the Songwriter Award in 2019.
This year’s Songwriter Award went to dance electronic artist Alice Ivy, who wrote on Instagram: “Getting this recognition in songwriting for me is super special and means the absolute world.”
First Nations singer/songwriter Toni Janke won the SSI Diversity in Music Award, while the inaugural Opera Australia Impact Award went to Linda Thompson, the founder, artistic director and CEO of the Australian Contemporary Opera Company. Thompson has been hailed as “a cultural entrepreneur for the 21st Century”.
The Music Journalist Award, sponsored by this masthead, was awarded to Melbourne-based music and pop culture writer, Ellie Robinson, whose work can be seen in The Music, NME, Junkee and Australian Guitar. Robinson is also the co-director of TRANSGENRE, a grassroots initiative that aims to celebrate trans and non-binary voices in Australian music.
Amid the growing challenges facing the live music industry including the recent collapse of several music festivals, AWMA’s founding executive producer and program director Vicki Gordon said the award continues to build a lifelong legacy for future generations.
“Our work is changing the industry forever and is reflected in the vast contribution of First Nations and culturally diverse Australian female, non-binary and GNC artists, musicians and music practitioners acknowledged across all areas of industry, from all genres of music and from all countries and cultures,” she said.
“In recent years we have grappled with some of the most critical and significant changes the industry has ever seen.”
“[We] continue to place gender equality front and centre as we move into the future with the knowledge that the playing field for the majority of women, First Nations artists and gender diverse minorities remains vastly inequitable.”
Gordon believes every aspect within the industry must be viewed through the lens of gender equality: “[From] artist development and career pathways [to] the facilitation and promotion of events and festivals, grant and support programs and audience development in particular,” she said, “to address the complex barriers to industry growth.”
The Queensland Government released a statement congratulating the winners, praising the “immense breadth of talented women musicians, creatives, technicians and industry leaders.”
“The Queensland Government is proud to have supported AWMA since its inception, recognising how this important initiative progresses gender equality in Queensland and nationally,” the statement read.
Now in its fifth year, the AWMA coincided with a Conference Program which focused this year on the theme of ‘Diversity, Equality & Inclusion’.