Lesbian yodeling twins from New Zealand – it sounds like a novelty act but sisters Jools and Lynda Topp are anything but a joke. The two sisters are beloved entertainers back in their homeland where they are known for their music and their live act in which they often perform as characters they’ve created and their TV show that ran for three seasons. Inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in 2008 and given a lifetime achievement award for songwriting in recognition of the massive impact they’ve had on New Zealand throughout their 25-year-plus career. The Topps are also known for their political activism – they’ve been on the forefront of movements supporting gay rights and Maori land rights and campaigned to keep New Zealand nuclear weapons-free.

Hugely popular in their homeland, the Topp Twins have toured throughout the world and now are being introduced to an even larger audience through the documentary biography of their lives and career, which screened Sunday and Monday at SIFF 10, introducing their film and performing live to enthusiastic full houses.

Lynda and Jools took some time to talk about their film. Both Topp Twins are lively, intelligent, outgoing women whose long experience working together as performers and whose lifetime of sisterhood is immediately obvious. Jools did much of the speaking but both women were eager to talk about their history and their film/

What was the origin of the film?

JT: We’d actually written a comedy movie that’s in another box somewhere and [our manager] said, “I think we’ve got enough material to make a documentary and tell the story of who we are and think about this other movie another time. It’s a concert-driven movie with all our performances and music and songs but it goes away from that. When we sing a song we’ll go away to something that affected us as we were growing up or some political event in New Zealand. It was directed by a Canadian, Lee Ann Pauley, and what happened as we told our life story we realized there was this great parallel in political activity in New Zealand in the time of the Topp Twins. So it’s sort of the political history of New Zealand and our life story. It’s an interesting little documentary because it has two things running in the same time.

What came first for you – the music or the politics?

JT: The music was always there but politics, even from an early age…we grew up on a dairy farm and there was no criteria of “you’re a girl, you have to do this, you’re a boy, you have to do this”. When you’re on the farm if a job had to be done you had to do it.
Everybody bring the hay and milk the cows.

It was like girls can do anything. Growing up, it was girls can do anything. We probably didn’t really understand it at the time but for us it was a great start to our political careers. I think as a little kid it made me feel empowered; you could do whatever your dad thought you could do.

We were always aware of injustice. Even if it was a kid being bullied at school or something, we were always aware of that and we’d either step in or we’d make them our friends. We were twins so there were two of us to deal with.

LT: And our mum, I remember when we were little kids she said this thing to us that probably has kept us in good stead our whole lives. She said you must never hate anybody, you can dislike people, but you can’t hate. Hate is what will destroy you.

JT:They’re in the movie, our mum and dad, and they’re real stars. They’re as honest as the day is long and I think that’s what they taught and instilled into us. That’s why we’re out and proud in New Zealand and they’ve had to deal with a lot, more than most parents because our brother’s gay, too, so the three of us are gay. They’re immensely proud of us and they’re old school, real old school dairy farming country people and they tell their side of the story. They’re really honest, they were a bit freaked out about it to begin with but I think the most important thing is that there is some light at the end of the tunnel for all of the New Zealanders who were a part of that movie, all the fights that we fought, all the political fights – the homosexual law reform bill, the nuclear free issues, Maori land marches, the apartheid in South Africa…

New Zealand was hugely involved in that [protests against apartheid] because we play rugby with the South Africans and we refused to play rugby with them and when they did come there were huge protests. I don’t think any of us could foresee that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison and become president of his country, that was a real bonus.
We won all those battles. It’s not many people who can stand up and say, “Every battle we fought, every protest, every political movement that we were part of – we won.” We’re still nuclear-free and I hope like hell we always will be because we talk about weapons of mass destruction and all those sorts of things in an almost flippant way these days and one of these days, is someone going to press the button?
It’s about being political but it’s also about having fun and that’s what the movie is about. The characters that we play and all the music the play. It’s a juxtaposition of a lot of things going on.

How did you get into performing?

We always sang from when we were little kids. Our mum bought us a ukulele and we’d play it and sing. We sang at parties and home, it was our apprenticeship. And then when we left home we joined the army, the Territorial Army which is part-time soldiers, and we didn’t really want to have that as a career.

LT: It was a free trip to the South Island!

JT: It was a good way to head out of home.

And you know we can stand up and be protestors now; you can’t knock something unless you’ve done it. We’ve been there.

LT: We didn’t want it to be our career. So then we started singing in little cafes and stuff like that and I think we were seen as kind of a bit kooky at the beginning and then there was a lot of political activism that we were involved in and then we’d write songs about that.

JT: A song will really rile people and get them roused up to be part of the whole thing. It’s not about being aggressive – sometimes people will listen to a song rather than listen to someone standing on a box telling them what needs to be done or how it needs to be done.

I think the fact that we’re entertainers, that’s #1. If you’re a good entertainer, then you can get the people inside, you can bring them in. Get them entertained, get them happy and then you can start to say important things and they will listen. If you’re just ramming things down people’s throats, it can backfire.

I think that’s what’s happened for us. The documentary screened in New Zealand and we’re thinking, you know, who’s going to come and see us? We’ve had an amazing career in New Zealand and people come to our live show all the time, but we’re thinking, who’s going to come see the movie? Just about every New Zealander went and saw it. It’s the biggest box office documentary that’s ever screened in New Zealand. Word of mouth got around and the movie has really taken off in New Zealand. And now, which is pretty exciting for us, it’s starting to make an impact overseas. It’s won an award everywhere it’s gone, so we’re pretty excited about it.

LT: The movie’s about honesty. If you actually wanted to say what it’s about, it’s about honesty. It’s about how people feel.

And we’re being honest about our sexuality and how we feel about things in life. It’s a good feeling. People come out of it with a smile on their face and that’s a good feeling.

Has it helped you in your career that you’re sisters?

JT: I think it has, we’re not just sisters, we’re twins. We shared an egg and even now we don’t question why we are. We’re twins and other people are born singular and we don’t know what that’s like at all. I think it’s always important to have someone – if you step forward and make a stand and you know someone’s going to watch your back, it’s a good feeling and I think that we understand each other a lot, we have the same values

We don’t have to rehearse. We just walk up to a gig.

Tonight we’ll be at the movie and they said “would you like to sing?” We have no idea what we’re going to sing but when we walk out there, it’ll come. It’ll be right and proper because we’ll make sure it is. We’re confident about ourselves.

I think the other thing that has made us one of New Zealand’s household names is that we’re confident we can work a crowd. That comes with time and experience and we’ve got a lot of that now. Performing is not just about singing songs, it’s about communicating.

What would you like your legacy to be as performers?

JT: Well, we’re generous with our time and our love.

LT: We’re honest about ourselves and we never hid anything from our audience. The other thing is if you believe in something, just stay with it. Believe in it and do everything and anything that you can to make something happen that you believe in.

What’s really important these days is to try and think we can change the world. It’s just such a big, daunting task, people just give up, they go, “What am I going to be able to do?” and I think the most important thing to do is celebrate who you are. Celebrate your own life. You fill up that well and you can give other people a drink of water. If you get your life, you get yourself, that’s your job. Your job is to find out who you are and become the person you are and be confident, then you can take on the world, then the world doesn’t seem such a daunting task anymore. I think it’s important that you honor yourself and celebrate who you are which is what we’re doing.