So let’s get down to basics. Is there a problem? Yes. What is the problem? Apparently we are suffering shrinkage of opportunities for singers and musicians to make a living. The arts, as a jobs program, is getting very weak in the knees, and a search for leg braces seems to be getting under way.
I think the search for leg braces is destined for failure. Those who are in the know about the problem seem to be trying to figure out how to market “The Arts”… that is, arts organizations’ need to deal with funding short falls and diminishing audience attendance. Almost everything I see being discussed in public about the action needed is off point. Arts organizations are being advised to find new ways to dress up the concert hall and design events relevant to an audience which seems willing to spend money, but not on tickets to “The Arts”.
Another big problem is a discussion today among deep pocket donors, which is bubbling into public view here and there. It places those who support “The Arts” in a difficult defensive position. I can imagine it would be very hard to argue the survival of “Classical Music” as being as important as alleviating some of the suffering of the starving among us while sipping Champagne in opulent surroundings. I wouldn’t think it possible to survive making such a case in many soup kitchen lines that are set up across our own still relatively prosperous country. My opinion on what these 1% ters ought to do with their bank accounts aside, I do believe the problem for the 1%ter is much the same as for the ticket buyer.
If you are selling a product that does not outshine your competition, then your result is going to be less impressive than your competitions’. I have seen some grudging admission that “The Arts” are really part of the entertainment industry, even if turning a profit seems to keep almost everyone else in the industry afloat. I see “The Arts”, “The Press” and just about any other form of communication as entertainment when they are not essential to a person’s survival. I have a friend that has a police scanner for entertainment. Lawyers may think of scanners as tools, but my friend has a toy. Tracking communication among emergency service personal is serious business, especially if you are going to chase the ambulance your scanner catches being sent out to gather victims of a traffic accident. It’s all about billing, about money, about survival.
Life is not “a box of chocolate”
No one can guarantee anyone anything, and the entertainment industry can only offer you opportunity. It can only offer an empty box that you must fill with what you have to offer in order to attract an audience. Artists might like to be able to define the product they are producing in terms of cultural values, but there is only one system of valuation that makes any difference at all. The price someone will pay.
If you are seeking to feed yourself and your family in the entertainment industry, you need to view the crisis, if you believe in it, from the point of view of anyone seeking employment. My first visits to the Guidance Counselors’ offices at Peru Central School, most likely during the time I was first getting to know my Renata, were dedicated to searching through employment categories in the catalogues strategically placed in the little waiting room outside the counselors’ offices. I trolled those catalogues in order to overcome my ignorance about the job market. I wanted to study something that could be my magic carpet to ride out of the life style to which my extended family had become accustomed.
I didn’t find my ultimate choice in those catalogues. I dedicated myself to the art and craft of singing without really knowing how risky a choice it was. I found out, when I applied for unemployment benefits just after leaving my military service with the Navy. I didn’t know what to write in one of the blanks on the application form I was filling out. The big book of job titles in that office gave me the approved wording to insert in the appropriate blank on the application form that I successfully filled out. It was: “classical singer”. Forget the fact that I was an unemployed “classical singer”. I was happy to be classified as one.
Needless to say: I found work and my little magic carpet revved up and carried me to many parts of the world I never dreamed to be able to visit. Oh! And yes. My life style never resembled the comfortable hard-working lower middle class life style of my dad, which now seems to be disappearing. You may not have noticed, but there is a crisis there as well.
Back to the product: be aware that there is only one honest way to make a living. Deliver value for the fee you collect. My dad bought himself his second new truck (I bought his first new one for him.) with money he earned by proving his labor valuable enough to become an employee rather than a jobs program participant. He was long past youth, but still full of energy. He loved the job he landed after the fur farm, where he worked most of his life, died, and his new job funded his life to the end of it. Artists and Arts Management personnel have to prove themselves just like my dad did and just like I did.
People will buy tickets, subscribe to and donate to whatever inspires them. If you want to make a success as a performer, you must entertain. If you want to make a success of an organization that presents the efforts of performers, you have to know what will entertain.
Last week-end I found an example of just the sort of entertainment I believe to be the cure for the “crisis”, if you believe there is one.
The Allant Trio at Hill and Hollow.