Entidades culturais e partidos juntam-se em coro de protestos contra ministro da Cultura

Primeiro ano de José Pinto Ribeiro na tutela
Entidades culturais e partidos juntam-se em coro de protestos contra ministro da Cultura
30.01.2009 - 12h20 Lusa

Falta de diálogo, falta de políticas para os vários sectores e desinvestimento são algumas das críticas que várias entidades culturais e partidos políticos, ouvidos pela agência Lusa, lançam ao ministro da Cultura José Pinto Ribeiro, quando se completa o primeiro ano de actividade à frente da tutela.

O presidente da Associação Portuguesa de Editores e Livreiros (APEL), Rui Beja, lamenta a "ausência de contacto" com o ministro a quem solicitou uma audiência em Agosto. "Solicitámos um reunião a 1 de Agosto ao senhor ministro, a 13 responderam-nos que reuniríamos logo que possível, e até hoje", disse à Lusa Rui Beja.

Os editores e livreiros querem alguns esclarecimentos do ministro, nomeadamente quando passa "a vigorar de facto" o Acordo Ortográfico. Esta informação é considerada essencial, designadamente para a área do livro escolar.

Rui Beja afirmou que a "APEL está disposta a cooperar, mas para isso tem de conhecer as perspectivas do ministro".

João Neto, presidente da Associação Portuguesa de Museologia (APOM) considerou também que "continua a faltar uma política estruturada" para o sector dos museus em Portugal, apesar do empenho demonstrado no último ano pelo actual ministro da Cultura.

"Está-se a caminhar para algo, mas o grande problema continua a ser a ausência de uma política estrutural para esta área", sublinhou o presidente da APOM, que aponta ainda "falta de bom senso, diálogo e cooperação com as instituições que poderiam apoiar o Ministério da Cultura nesta matéria".

Sobre as medidas tomadas ao longo de um ano para o sector dos museus - que tem sofrido na última década um progressivo agravamento das dificuldades orçamentais e recursos humanos - João Neto define-as como "analgésicos".

"Há medicamentos para atenuar a dor e há medicamentos para curar a doença. É destes últimos que necessita a museologia em Portugal", apelou.

Defendeu um olhar mais aprofundado da tutela para a globalidade dos museus do país - incluindo os municipais e privados - e "não apenas os nacionais".

Questionado sobre a actividade desenvolvida pela Rede Portuguesa de Museus (RPM), entidade tutelada pelo MC que se dedica à credenciação e qualificação de todos os museus do país e que conta actualmente com cerca de 120 museus, o responsável apontou que "continua com dificuldades em aplicar as normas adequadas".

"A Rede Portuguesa dos Museus não deveria estar só nas mãos do Estado - defendeu - mas sim com uma administração tripartida que passe pelo Ministério da Cultura, a APOM e o ICOM" (International Council of Museums), organização não-governamental que possui uma representação em Portugal.

A APOM advoga ainda que parte do dinheiro dos jogos (como o Euromilhões) deveria ser "aplicada em bons projectos que incidam na área do património nacional".

Por seu lado, a Associação Portuguesa de Realizadores (APR) criticou o ministro da Cultura por não ter apresentado uma política para o cinema português ao fim de um ano de mandato. "Não houve medidas novas que instituíssem um sentido de renovação no sector", disse o vice-presidente da associação, o realizador Fernando Vendrell. Para aquela associação de realizadores, no último ano assistiu-se a uma "descaracterização do cinema e a uma invasão da televisão nos territórios do cinema" e ainda a uma "inconsequência na atribuição dos financiamentos".

"Com o mesmo dinheiro tentou fazer as mesmas ou até mais obras e isso reflectiu-se também nas condições de trabalho", lamentou o realizador, sublinhando que a associação entregou a Pinto Ribeiro um documento com propostas para o sector e do qual não obtiveram ainda respostas.

"O ministro não está dialogante e não faz parte da solução, mas do problema e a simpatia que temos pela pessoa não tem correspondência com uma dinâmica política para o sector", sublinhou.

Partidos e Alegre criticam em uníssono

O deputado comunista João Oliveira lamentou o desinvestimento do ministério da Cultura ao longo do último ano e o consequente aumento das dificuldades sentidas no sector. João Oliveira disse que "a redução das verbas para a Cultura inscritas no Orçamento de Estado para 2009 demonstrou um claro desinvestimento no sector", dando como exemplo um "retrocesso no apoio às artes", referindo-se à revisão do regulamento da Direcção-Geral das Artes, e criticou ainda o apoio a "projectos megalómanos, de grande envergadura", dando como exemplo a Colecção Berardo.

O deputado referiu ainda a "situação preocupante em que se encontra o património" e a possibilidade do cenário se agravar com a legislação relativa aos bens patrimoniais de domínio público.

Vasco Graça Moura, eurodeputado do PSD, qualificou o primeiro ano de José António Pinto Ribeiro à frente da pasta da cultura com nota 0,0.

"Tenho uma cordial relação de simpatia com o actual ministro da Cultura, mas considero que a sua prestação equivale a 0,0", disse à Lusa Vasco Graça Moura.

Também escritor, Graça Moura afirmou que o actual ministro "é um dos principais agentes do atentado à Língua Portuguesa que é o novo Acordo Ortográfico".

Graça Moura salientou também haver "sinais preocupantes relativamente ao património edificado", sem pormenorizar.

A vice-presidente do CDS-PP Teresa Caeiro também fez "um balanço claramente negativo" da actuação de José António Pinto Ribeiro e considerou que a situação nesta área não melhorou. Teresa Caeiro lembrou que quando tomou posse o ministro disse que "iria fazer mais e melhor com menos recursos". "Ora verificamos que não fez mais nem melhor e teve os mesmos recursos", considerou.

A ex-secretária de Estado da Artes e Espectáculos do Governo de Santana Lopes apontou alguns casos que lhe merecem críticas: "Estamos com atrasos no apoio às artes, estamos perante uma indefinição no funcionamento da OPART (estrutura que gere o Teatro Nacional de São Carlos e a Companhia Nacional de Bailado). Convém lembrar que o próprio ministro considerou que era anacrónica esta fusão de estruturas, até agora nem fez uma avaliação nem alterou o que quer que fosse", criticou.

A deputada indicou que também foram deixados cair projectos como o pólo em Portugal do Museu Hermitage (depois de um investimento de quase 2 milhões de euros numa exposição inicial) e o Museu do Mar da Língua.

Sobre este último, a dirigente do CDS-PP referiu que "numa primeira fase o ministro disse que teria de ser realizado até ao fim de 2008 para não perder verbas, depois quis fazer este museu na estação do Rossio, depois disse que propunha um restauro e renovação de todo o edifício do Museu de Arte Popular para aí instalar o Museu do Mar da Língua e finalmente desistiu do projecto".

Na área do património, Teresa Caeiro destacou que há cerca de 3 mil obras classificadas em todo o país, muitas das quais são património mundial classificado pela UNESCO que se encontram em situação de risco.

Sobre esta matéria, Pinto Ribeiro comprometeu-se hoje, em conversa com a Lusa, a "recuperar todo o património classificado pela UNESCO nos próximos três anos", acreditando também que, graças às medidas que implementa, "todo o património português seja recuperado entre cinco e dez anos".

"Em 2005, não estava nada feito em termos de diagnóstico e de carta de risco. Primeiro, foi desenvolvido um trabalho de levantamento da situação do património, sobretudo em relação a património classificado e monumentos nacionais", reconheceu Pinto Ribeiro.

José António Pinto Ribeiro tomou posse a 30 de Janeiro de 2008, substituindo no cargo Isabel Pires de Lima. Tal como afirmou na tomada de posse, Pinto Ribeiro continua hoje a afirmar que os baixos orçamentos para a cultura não são um problema e que é possível “fazer mais com menos”.

Segundo Pinto Ribeiro, tal não significa que "o ministério da Cultura não queira ter um orçamento maior", mas alarga o contexto e aplica a polémica frase a todas as áreas. "Se era um objectivo meu, hoje é ainda mais importante. Isto porque atravessamos uma crise sem precedentes. Isto significa que devia ser uma palavra de ordem de todos nós fazer mais e melhor com menos".

Mas não só a oposição se levanta nas críticas à gestão da cultura no último ano. O poeta e deputado socialista Manuel Alegre lamentou que o Ministério da Cultura (MC) continue a ter "uma dotação orçamental baixíssima", que se traduz, entre outros aspectos, "num grande desprezo pelo património".

"Não sou conta o mecenato, mas é uma responsabilidade fundamental do Estado recuperar e salvaguardar o património nacional, que é a pegada histórica de um povo", salientou.

Escusando-se a comentar a performance do ministro José António Pinto Ribeiro, o escritor preferiu centrar a sua avaliação nas prioridades do Governo para a área da cultura.

"A cultura não tem sido prioridade do Governo, daí os baixíssimos orçamentos", conclui Manuel Alegre, alertando para a degradação de alguns dos sectores mais importantes deste sector, como o património arquitectónico e os museus.

Lastimou os casos que têm vindo a público de degradação de património, como o Convento de Cristo, em Tomar, o Mosteiro da Batalha e a Sé Velha de Coimbra.

"Não percebo como o Estado tem tantos milhões para salvar um banco e não salva o património nacional do país. Parece que o património material está hoje acima do património histórico".
http://ultimahora.publico.clix.pt/noticia.aspx?id=1358135&idCanal=14

Concertos em 2007 geraram 30 milhões de euros de receita de bilheteira

Espectáculos de música ligeira em Portugal
Concertos em 2007 geraram 30 milhões de euros de receita de bilheteira

A realização de concertos de música ligeira em Portugal em 2007 gerou quase 30 milhões de euros de receita de bilheteira, segundo dados do Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE) divulgados esta quinta-feira
Lusa

De acordo com o INE, em 2007 realizaram-se 27.650 espectáculos ao vivo, o que inclui teatro, ópera, música clássica e ligeira, dança, circo e tauromaquia, que foram vistos por um total de 9,8 milhões de espectadores. No entanto, foram os concertos de música ligeira que registaram maior afluência (3,7 milhões de pessoas) e geraram mais receitas de bilheteira (29,7 milhões de euros). De entre os espectáculos ao vivo, a ópera registou o preço médio por bilhete mais caro, 31 euros. O INE dá conta ainda que - citando preços correntes de 2005 - cada agregado residente em Portugal gastou em média 997 euros em cultura, lazer e distracção. Lisboa e Algarve foram as regiões onde se gastou mais naquelas três vertentes. No que toca às artes plásticas, em 2007 inauguraram 6.609 exposições que registaram cerca de sete milhões de visitantes. Foi na região Norte que se realizaram mais exposições (trinta por cento), seguindo-se a região Centro e Lisboa, com 26 e 24 por cento respectivamente. Os jardins zoológicos, botânicos e aquários foram os preferidos da população portuguesa em 2007, com três milhões de visitantes, de um total de 9,9 milhões de pessoas que passaram por espaços museológico. No cinema, em 2007 registaram-se 16,3 milhões de espectadores, dos quais 11,6 milhões (73 por cento) assistiu a filmes norte-americanos. No total, a exibição cinematográfica rendeu 69 milhões de euros de receita de bilheteira. Fonte: SIC

How can the cultural sector survive the financial crisis?

How can the cultural sector survive the financial crisis?

January 2009

Helmut K. Anheier (Ph.D. Yale University, 1986) is Professor of Sociology at Heidelberg University and the academic Director of the Heidelberg Centre for Social Investment. He is also Professor and Director of the Center for Civil Society and the Center for Globalization and Policy Research at UCLA's School of Public Affairs. Anheier's work covers the civil society, the nonprofit sector, philanthropy, organisational studies, policy analysis and comparative methodology. In 2008, he published Cultures and Globalization: The Cultural Economy.

It is clear to everyone who follows daily reports about the cancellation of cultural events and the closure of opera houses and theatres, or learns about economic troubles at one cultural institution or another, that the global financial crisis is already having a significant impact on philanthropic giving and non-profit organisations. [1]

It is also clear that the crisis’ impact is going to get deeper and wider for some time to come. It is less clear how long the fallout will last; and it is especially unclear what the crisis ultimately means for policy-makers, leaders and managers in the cultural sector. This article examines how the arts and culture sector is responding to growing uncertainty in the global economy – and how the sector can weather the gathering storm.

http://www.labforculture.org/en/content/view/full/39830

O Futuro da Internet

Future Internet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Study Guides Academic Work future Internet

Sobre as Políticas Culturais em Portugal e nos outros países

Fonte: Ministério da Cultura da República Portuguesa, Maio 2008

Choque do Futuro: Mitos e Excessos

Prefácio
Ao julgarmo-nos Deuses, devemos esforçar-nos por ser tão bons como eles.
– Frase introdutória de Stewart Brand, no Whole Earth Catalog (1968)


A maior parte das pessoas considera que o ritmo da mudança tecnológica
cresce de forma exponencial. De acordo com esta opinião, a Internet e os
computadores pessoais correspondem apenas às inovações mais visíveis entre
todas as que nos rodeiam, enquanto outras irão surgir ainda mais rapidamente.
Estas pessoas estão convencidas de que o impacto social da evolução
tecnológica nunca teve no passado os efeitos marcantes e profundos que
hoje apresenta.
Mas estão erradas.
A Internet não é assim tão extraordinária. Nem o computador pessoal.
Abandonem tudo quanto é tecnologia, vivam no meio de uma floresta durante
uma semana e descubram se é do vosso computador portátil que
sentem mais a falta. As tecnologias mais antigas são de facto as mais importantes
para nós – o carro e o telefone, a electricidade e o betão, os têxteis
e a agricultura, para referir apenas algumas. O entendimento comum
sobre a tecnologia moderna está infl acionado e desfocado da realidade.
Sobreavaliamos a importância das invenções novas e fascinantes, minimizando
ao mesmo tempo as que conhecemos ao longo da nossa vida.
A mudança não está a crescer de forma exponencial. A verdade é que a
tecnologia é, há séculos, um factor de atracção e de perplexidade. Este
livro propõe-se ajudá-los a repensar a forma como a mudança tecnológica
ocorre na realidade.

RELATÓRIO SOBRE INDÚSTRIAS CRIATIVAS

Creative Industries Full Report

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Europe Government report creative industries

WORLD MUSIC HISTORY

World Music History
Ever since World Music emerged as a useful marketing concept back in 1987, conspiracy theorists have wasted energies on criticising it. 'Enough!', says Ian Anderson...

In the New York Times last October, rock star David Byrne penned a feature titled 'Why I Hate World Music.' "In my experience, the use of the term world music is a way of dismissing artists or their music as irrelevant to one's own life," he avowed. "It's a way of relegating this 'thing' into the realm of something exotic and therefore cute, weird but safe, because exotica is beautiful but irrelevant; they are, by definition, not like us... It groups everything and anything that isn't 'us' into 'them.' This grouping is a convenient way of not seeing a band or artist as a creative individual, albeit from a culture somewhat different from that seen on American television. It's a label for anything at all that is not sung in English or anything that doesn't fit into the Anglo-Western pop universe this year."


Well, that's David Byrne's little local problem, but it is one that has occasionally raised its head among conspiracy theorists ever since the summer of 1987 when the original World Music campaign kicked in. Indeed, hardly had the first press releases settled on journalists' desks when London's City Limits magazine ran a knee-jerk featurette penned by Rick Glanville under the heading 'Bullshit Detector'. "Anybody from the Third World is allowed to join through the paternalistic assumption of rudimentary, exotic and inaccessible qualities. What the punter-friendly moniker fails to do is sidestep the middle class white dominance which spawned it -- fRoots magazine has tenaciously trumpeted acts like the Bhundu Boys and Youssou N'Dour when such hi-tech contemporary synth bands have never worn an Aran jumper in their lives."

Most of that says a lot more about the prejudices of the accuser than it does about the subject itself. In Britain, anything done out of enthusiasm by somebody with the slightest whiff of middle-classedness about them is automatically cause for intense suspicion. If such enthusiastic middle-class activists happen to be white and male too then it's an automatic conviction and throw away the key. Oddly, many of the people who hold these views are white, male and inescapably middle class too. Similarly, across the Atlantic there is a type of American who views anything done by those nasty ex-colonialist Brits (excluding, of course, the poor down-trodden Celts) as bound to be reprehensible. Of course, they then get very jumpy if we mention Coca Cola, cultural colonialism and the CIA...

All of this was very far from the thoughts of those who instigated the short-term marketing plan that resulted in World Music becoming a 'genre'. There was nary a subconscious twinge of a thought of ghettoising third world artists as irrelevant exotica or dressing them in Aran sweaters, I promise you.

How did we get to that point in now ancient history? Well, looking at it from personal experience, back in the 1960s it was very hard to find anything in England which wasn't American or a local copy of it (that'll teach those ex-colonialists, eh?). In turn, jazz, folk and blues (and later reggae) each had a boom, establishing such sufficiently sizeable niches that you would henceforth find their sections in most record shops. What might actually be put in those sections never needed to be fully defined, not that anybody ever could. The important thing was that you gut-feeling knew what jazz or folk was, even if it wasn't the same gut-feeling as the next person had. If you thought that was what you liked, then you knew where there might be a chance of finding it. Record shop staff could take a reasonable shot at which box to drop an LP sleeve into. So the stuff sold to the fans who wanted to buy it, and the curious beginner had somewhere to browse.

In the early '60s, things were a lot less tribal. One night we'd go to see pop R&B bands, another it might be jazz (trad or be-bop, didn't matter) or folk. My local beatnik coffee bar had a Miriam Makeba record which attracted my attention, and bits of Latin jazz that had less appeal due to personal trumpet phobia. Davy Graham's early records had intriguing stuff that we were told came from expeditions to North Africa. So when my burrowings into roots musics led me eventually to havens like Collett's, I'd occasionally impulse-buy albums on Lyrichord, Folkways or Nonesuch. Whilst my main interest at the time was country blues, I slowly accumulated Bauls from Bengal, Egyptian and Chinese instrumental music and Georgian choirs. I even had the mad idea, circa 1969 when I folded up my country blues band, of trying to do some blend of these musics with blues, but I didn't have the slightest clue where to find the players so my chance of being several decades ahead of my time died on the drawing board. But I was lucky: most people didn't know about Collett's and if there was an 'International' section in their local record shop it contained Johnny Halliday, Nana Mouskouri, Dorita y Pepe and a Dutch fake Hawaiian called Wout Steenhuis. Not a lot of inspiration to enthusiasm in there.


As I wasn't too bright or motivated, I didn't go to university and thus grew a deep mistrust of people who used terms like 'ethnomusicology' and 'anthropology'. But there were other underground routes to worldly delights. The American magazine Sing Out! was one. I first heard Bai Konte's kora on one of their flexi-discs in the '70s, little imagining that I'd one day visit his home and work with his son. At the beginning of the '80s things gradually started to get better. The information revolution was growing and the world was getting smaller. Not long after this magazine started up, there was another short-lived but vital publication called Collusion, edited by David Toop, Sue Steward and Steve Beresford. Like Blues Unlimited in the '60s it brought the wonderful realisation that there were other like-questing minds out there, sources for import records -- Ali Farka Toure, Les Ambassadeurs, holy shit! -- and information.

In what now seems a relatively short time there came King Sunny Ade, Youssou N'Dour and Thomas Mapfumo to play live before our very eyes, GLC shows, gigs in the park behind behind the Commonwealth Institute, Arts Worldwide events and Womad, Earthworks, GlobeStyle and Stern's. Alexis Korner, ever broadminded, would play Okinawan records on the radio, Charlie Gillett and Andy Kershaw soon became converts to international sounds, and the 3 Mustaphas 3 popped up on John Peel. Our magazine was able to review more and more records because they were now becoming available on local release or import, and artists came here so we could talk to them. My own little record label emerged at the beginning of the '80s with a minor hit by Bulgaria's Nadka Karadjova (entirely, it must be said, because of concentrated novelty airplay by Terry Wogan) and the far more hip indie label 4AD had a mammoth seller with Les Mysteres De Voix Bulgares. But where the hell did you look in your High Street record shop for all this varied music that now had a burgeoning would-be buyer base but no obvious rack to browse?

It was Roger Armstrong and Ben Mandelson from GlobeStyle who called the fateful meeting. For some reason I've kept all the minutes. At 7.00pm on Monday June 29th, 1987, what was initially described as an 'International Pop Label Meeting' was convened at the Empress Of Russia in St. John Street, Islington (then also the home of Islington Folk Club: recently closed to become a restaurant). "The main aim", began the suggested agenda, "is to broaden the appeal of our repertoire", and it listed various points for discussion such as identifying who the target audience were, how to reach them, how to deal with this at retail and, crucially, "Adoption of a campaign/media title".

The minutes record who was there: Chris Popham, Ben Mandelson, Roger Armstrong and Ted Carroll from GlobeStyle/ Ace; Jonathan Rudnick from Crammed US; Amanda Jones, Thos Brooman and Steve Hadrell from Womad; Charlie Gillett from Oval; Mark Kidel from Channel 4; Ian Anderson and Lisa Warburton from Folk Roots/Rogue Records; Anne Hunt, Mary Farquharson and Nick Gold from Arts Worldwide/World Circuit; Scott Lund and Iain Scott from Stern's/Triple Earth; Joe Boyd from Hannibal and writer Chris Stapleton -- virtually all still involved in this music today. Later meetings also saw participation from Robert Urbanus from Stern's, Mike Chadwick from Revolver distribution, Mark Stratford from New Routes distribution, John Martin from 11th Hour/Crossing The Border; Gordon Potts and Simon Coe from Virgin Retail; Andrea Lawrence from Cooking Vinyl; Jumbo Vanrenen and Trevor Herman from Earthworks, Nick Carnac from Carnacdisque; Doug Veitch, Owen & Phil from Disc'Afrique, Lucy Duran from the National Sound Archive, and writers Philip Sweeney, Chris Hawkins and Klaus Frederking. But it's the first night bunch who you can blame for 'World Music' as the genre that now exists.

It wasn't a new name, just one of many that had floated around in the preceding decades. But the logic set out by Roger Armstrong was that an established, unified generic name would give retailers a place where they could confidently rack otherwise unstockable releases, and where customers might both search out items they'd heard on the radio (not knowing how to spell a mis-pronounced or mis-remembered name or title) and browse through wider catalogue. Various titles were discussed including 'Worldbeat' (left out anything without drums), 'Tropical' (bye bye Bulgarians), 'Ethnic' (boring and academic), 'International Pop' (the death-by-Johnny-and-Nana syndrome) and 'Roots' (left out Johnny and Nana). 'World Music' seemed to include the most and omit the least, and got it on a show of hands. Nobody thought of defining it or pretending there was such a beast: it was just to be a box, like jazz, classical or rock...

The plot progressed quickly during that summer. The princely sum of £3500 was contributed by the participants, headed browser dividers were manufactured for distribution to shops along with a co-operative starter pack of some 50 albums that were likely to be stout sellers, freelance press officer Suzanne Parks was hired for a short contract, press releases and information packs were written, Ben Mandelson assembled a compilation cassette for promotion and sale through the NME, and October was designated World Music Month. Somebody much later suggested that our £3500 eventually bought more worldwide column inches and airwave hours pound-for-pound than any other campaign in the history of the music biz: Suzanne Parks got head-hunted by a major label as their press officer.


Nowhere in any of this was there the faintest whiff of exploitation, exclusivity, cliques, ghettoisation, conspiracies, cultural imperialism, racism or any of the other nonsensical -isms that have been chucked at the notion since, often by people who ought to know better and in the end do little more than expose their own foibles. It was simply a great idea, followed up by a lot of unprecedented co-operation between enthusiasts (very few thought of each other as business rivals) who wanted others to have more opportunity to share their enthusiasms. Yes, it was good for business, but by being so it was automatically good for the incomes of the artists too.

Of course, being older and, if not wiser, having the benefit of hindsight, one can see that having such a simple concept without any baggage was still likely to bring problems. Even if the original idea was virus-free, it was bound to get thoroughly bugged as others logged on.

In minority musics as in political parties, people will always invent conspiracies and low motives where none exist (the enthusiastic activist must have a sub-plot, mustn't they?) But just try explaining the role of the enthusiast to a musician from a poor third world country where the very notion is alien. I remember an in-law of mine from Madagascar bursting into tears when, having finally grasped the totally unknown concept of 'a hobby', she also realised that this notion involving spare time was a supreme luxury even further beyond her grasp than mere material posessions.

Imagine what suspicions must easily and understandably course through the minds of third world musicians working with western producers and promoters, especially when their home experience of the record business is often of being ripped-off and bootlegged by their fellow countrymen on an unimaginable scale. Why on earth would this apparently rich Westerner (for that's how we seem) be doing this for hardly any return? They must be ripping me off! Couple that with the quite reasonable logic that Michael Jackson's got a CD out and he's riding in limos and living in a mansion, but I've got a CD out and I'm not... Small wonder that virtually all world music producers and promoters have at least one sad tale to tell of an unfortunate misunderstanding or relationship breakdown over money with a musician they'd worked so hard to help.

Mind you, when The Voice was conned into publishing a grossly libellous piece suggesting that artists including Dembo Konte & Kausu Kuyateh were being exploited by "World Music slavemasters" like Ian Anderson, Lucy Duran and the Womad organisation, Dembo was so livid that he immediately set off down to the paper's office to remonstrate. The features editor nearly lost his job: because the piece had said what they so wanted to be true, they'd published it without checking first...

The racism issue is always hard to deal with. At an unruly public discussion held in the mid '80s, a group of Arts Council funded UK-based African musicians declared that the reason they had to search for their own gigs and self-produce their albums was that they were black in a white society. I pointed out that virtually all white English folk musicians had to do the same thing, without any grant aid, but that if at the end of the day there were no gigs coming in we had to face up to the fact that maybe people didn't think our music was any good. The guys in that band never needed to deal with that concept as they could always use the racism excuse. Needless to say, it wasn't a well-received message.

Long after all the dust has settled, who knows what was really going through Paul Simon's mind when he set off to record Graceland? Yes, he was able to rejuvenate his career and enjoy the fruits of a multi-million seller with music that couldn't have been made without the contribution of outside-unknown black South African musicians. But was he aware of the political minefield he was entering over the cultural boycott? Was he an '80s Pat Boone figure, watering down black music just to gain success with his white audience? Or was he blindly propelled into the project by an enthusiasm for music he'd personally discovered and wanted to share with others? Who are we to judge, without exposing our own prejudices, jealousies and pre-conceived ideas? What I do know is that fellow DJs at my local radio station stopped taking the mickey and started asking to borrow the African records I'd been playing. And that when I saw the Graceland tour, established Simon fans were mightily pissed off by the way he stayed out of the limelight and let Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Miriam Makeba front the show, and since those days Ladysmith have become million-sellers themselves. Oh, but I forgot, they "sold out" by doing a beans commercial, so they don't count...

That latter kind of reaction to world music artists is part of yet another set of problems heaped on this genre that doesn't exist other than as a box in a record shop.
Angelique Kidjo complains in her introduction to the recent Music Hound World book that "Critics generally want a musician from a foreign country to stick to a pure tradition; he has to be 'authentic'." Well, there are 'purists' and 'traditionalists' in just about every form of music. But it was never part of the original World Music concept to tell artists what to do, just to help them sell records. There's no rules to stop Kidjo or Youssou N'Dour or Zap Mama if they want to make music that they or the buyers may feel fits better in a different box, or no box at all. If they move into a genre that thousands of other artists are already involved in, perhaps as a route to 'crossover' success, it's their choice. It is perhaps more likely to be their loss of uniqueness rather than 'authenticity' -- there may be many other artists already in that field who do it better -- that loses fans. If the recording artist has the right to make whatever music they like, the potential buyer also has the right to buy what they like -- or not.

Editor in frenzied Aran sweater attack on fiercely resisting World Music victim...spacer
Editor in frenzied Aran sweater attack on
fiercely resisting World Music victim...
Photo: Jak Kilby
Of course, it's another story if the changes are forced on the artist by the record label, but I don't detect that being on the agenda of any of the original World Music plotters. Yes, by becoming a rolling bandwagon it did later pick up a small selection of shysters, control freaks, newage knob-twiddlers, self-glorifiers and sick California crazies with a weird and varied selection of personal agendas. But that's bath water for you.

Sub-cultures of World Music fans even go through internecine attitude struggles. When I started to get this magazine up to speed with its coverage of what-was-yet-to-be-called World Music in the early '80s, many noses were looked down by other people who were already involved, or perhaps entering from the jazz direction, at the thought of these dreadfully embarrassing uncool folkies getting interested. It took quite a while to undo those prejudices (some of the very people who were later at that inaugural meeting took some convincing, I can tell you...) and it goes on in other quarters to this day. Yes, there are some out there who don't like the term World Music simply because -- as it has been consistently championed by the likes of fRoots -- they still make imagined Aran sweatery connotations. Twerps...

At the end of World Music Year Zero, 1987, I went to the best ever gig of my whole life -- Youssou N'Dour in the stadium at Ziguinchor, Casamance, Senegal. Later that night, we sat talking at Youssou's hotel and another English person in the party told him how he hoped Youssou wouldn't go the route of Salif Keita's then-recent Soro album, which the Englishman considered 'Westernised' as it was full of synthesizers. Youssou politely, gentlemanly, put the guy in his place, saying that instruments don't have a nationality, only musicians, and that if a Senegalese musician played a synthesizer or an electric guitar, it became a Senegalese instrument. Recently I was able to talk with Youssou again about Western attitudes to this music (he reconfirmed his 1987 belief) and whether he saw a difference between how the Americans, the British and the French approach things.

His answers were revealing. "I'm really more close to the British vision than the French," he said. "France was much more involved with their colonisation, compared with how things were with the British in Ghana, for example, and in the same way they really don't have such a good approach for this music. It's definitely different." We talked about how in colonial days their subjects had to learn French, whilst the British were content to largely leave education in the local language. "And Americans, they just don't know. They're really closed. When we did the big Amnesty tour everywhere, I was really close to one black American. We flew to Abidjan and when we arrived we took a bus, nine o'clock at night. He said 'Where is Africa?' He saw the buildings and lights. 'This is not Africa'. They think there is a country called Africa where we all speak 'African'".

Madagascar's Tarika have an affectionate term for those genuinely friendly, determined-to-bond Americans who show up backstage in all-purpose colourful robes and world music hats. They call them "professional Africans". And when Tarika first started touring in the USA, their pals from the Mustaphas told them that when people in diners or on the street asked where they came from, all they needed to say was "out of town" and the enquirer would be completely satisfied with the answer. It turned out to be absolutely true. I once read and have now forgotten the percentage of US citizens who own a passport, and it was startlingly low. That is probably why an American journalist on a conference panel once avowed that it was a lot easier for Europeans to hear World Music because we lived so much closer to it, and it's surely this rather than a box called World Music which explains why the most common adjective that crops up in Tarika's US press cuttings is "exotic".

The trouble with Americans, as somebody once said, is that they think they own the world but they don't know where it is. Roy Bookbinder once told a classic tale of a Florida club promoter who, on learning Roy was about to go to England on tour, assumed he must speak French as "it's so close to Paris..."

Of course none of the above applies to David Byrne, who is a sophisticated, educated, world-travelling artist, runs a label that has put out some fine international ethnic tropical worldbeat records, and rose above all that long ago. However, it maybe explains why he imagines everybody else categorises World Music in that way he doesn't like. But mostly they don't. Not outside his native USA, anyway, and I'm not even sure it's so universally true there. People just find it a useful box, all that was originally intended. They certainly put records in it that neither you, I, the original plotters or David Byrne alike would ever dream of including -- have you seen what Billboard includes on their World Music chart? -- but it still serves its original great purpose.

It's not all positive, but World Music (or Musique du Monde in neighbourly Paris) is way ahead on points. It sells large quantities of records that you couldn't find for love or money two decades ago. It has let many musicians in quite poor countries get new respect (and houses, cars and food for their families), and it turns out massive audiences for festivals and concerts. It has greatly helped international understanding and provoked cultural exchanges -- people who've found themselves neighbours in the same box have listened to each other and ended up making amazing music together. Oh, and it has allowed a motley bunch of enthusiasts to not yet need to get proper jobs. I call it a Good Thing, and just feel a bit sorry for people with the thinking time on their hands to decide they hate World Music... Lighten up, guys, it's only a box in a record shop.

Fonte: http://www.frootsmag.com/content/features/world_music_history/

Artes, trabalhadores e financiamento

In praise of part-time musicians
Musicians with jobs invariably make the most exciting music, due to the liberation of
seperating creativity from financial reward

Keith Kahn-Harris
guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 December 2008 11.00 GMT

In a recent Guardian article, John Harris surveyed the music industry's increasingly
desperate attempt to deal with the twin threats of the recession and the impact of illegal
downloading. He argued that emerging tendency for music to be given away free will
"sully the magic of music".
Harris is right to be concerned that the music industry's attempts to cope with falling
profits could result in the tightening of the corporate screw. But he is wrong to see the
growing expectation that music should be free is necessarily a threat to musical pleasure
and creativity. In fact, separating music from financial reward can be immensely
liberating.
At this point, some readers will undoubtedly groan and brace themselves for a mistyeyed
"spirit of '77" attack on the evils of the music business and the impossibility of
mixing true creativity with commerce. Yet my argument is not that participation in
capitalist society compromises musical excellence, but that participation in capitalist
society can support musical excellence provided that musicians earn a living away from
music. Yes, I am writing in praise of the "day job".
Let me give an example: The mysterious Norwegian known as Fenriz has made 13
albums as drummer, vocalist and guitarist of the cult black metal band Darkthrone. He
is known and admired worldwide as one of the founders of black metal. Most days
though, he is Gyvle Nagell, a 37-year-old who works in Oslo's central postal sorting
office. For all their renown, Darkthrone, like most other extreme metal bands, simply do
not make enough money for Fenriz/Nagell to give up the day job. But this hasn't
stopped him being a prolific and legendary musician.
Such double-lives are common throughout the metal underground and in many other
music scenes. There are entire genres that do not permit artists to survive off music
alone. A huge amount of music is subsidised through day jobs.
Of course, the importance of other sources of income for musicians - and the dole in
particular - has long been recognised. But I am not here to praise the bohemian artist,
freezing in a bedsit and spending any money they have on ramen noodles, heroin and
plectrums. I'm here to praise the music fanatic who holds down a reasonable if
unexciting job, turning in a decent day's work after spending the night in a recording
studio or driving back from a gig in Stoke.
It is this kind of musician - dedicated, self-sacrificing, self-disciplined - whose efforts are
the lifeblood of a host of vibrant music scenes and who will be least affected by the
current turmoil in the music industry. Any money they made was only ever ploughed
back into music. Lower revenues will certainly make them dig deeper and sacrifice more
for their art, but it will not stop the music.
What the free music revolution threatens is not music per se, but the idea that you have
to be a musician full time to be truly creative. You don't. Too often the commercially
viable musician sinks into an effete preciousness that is the death knell of creativity.

Being a "full time" musician didn't seem to spur Axl Rose into making Chinese
Democracy any quicker.
It is time that the importance of day job-supported musicians was more widely
recognised – for it is they who will ensure that music will survive the death of the music
industry.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES (B4MD)

BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES (B4MD) tells the story of American music as its future hangs in the balance. Filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen traveled the country, hoping to understand why mainstream music seems so packaged and repetitive, and whether huge corporations really had the power to silence musical innovation. The answers they found on this journey..ultimately, the promise that the future holds..are what makes B4MD both riveting and exhilarating.

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http://www.beforethemusicdies.com/