Live Music Events/Festivals - Coursework Example

?Live music events/festivities By Insert Insert Insert Introduction The Second World War had a huge impact on the livelihoods of people and affected many things in the society including how live music was done. The period after the war saw some people trying to salvage the situation with the aim of going back to normal. However, by mid 1950s, a new form of musical entertainment was emerging. It was informed by the desire to have a genre that would be appealing to different types of audiences. This saw the uprising of the “do-it-yourself” kind of music. It is a genre that can be seen as the main contributor for the promotion of jazz, skiffle and folk music. It can also be seen as the time when teenagers emerged as the chief consumers of most of the live music concerts (Ward, 2011; Schwartz and Godfrey, 1993) History and development of live music Before the world war disrupted live performance, it was organized mainly in three types of venues. The very first was the music hall. The music hall was not only a venue for performance but also an important commercial place and social gathering. Secondly, there is the dancehall circuit. This was characterized mainly by the ballroom performances. Last but not least were the concert hall circuits. This was mainly seen as the place for classical or art music before the war began. After the war, these types of live music was tried to be resuscitated by the different stakeholders but as this paper will show, there was a new concept that was in the making (Matt, 2010). It is also worth noting that the different players in the music industry played an important role in the sustenance of the live music changes over time. These include the producers, the recorders as well as the disc jockeys. In fact, it can be argued that the players that survived the war were probably the ones that had a grip to large extent on the direction of the live music performances in the 1950s. It was during this time that the industry players began to discover that since there were new commercial as well as social forces, it was not possible to contain the people in the old ways of doing things not only in music but in almost all spheres of life (Born, 1995). The factors shaping the sector a. The state The state, both locally as well as nationally has a huge role in the development an organization of live music. The state plays the important role of promoter as well as regulator and these are very important factors that would either make a performance to thrive or to depreciate over time. During the post war era, the Arts Council of Britain was setup in the year 1946. It was initially setup as a peacetime alternative to the previous Council for the encouragement of music and the arts which had initially been setup in the 1940s (Simon, 2012). The arts council played a pivotal role in the sponsoring of live music events in Britain in the early days of its inception. The main role that the council played was the preservation of the important culture of live music while at the same time trying to make the live music concerts as accessible to the wider population as possible. The live music was seen by the government wing as an important part of promoting the culture and this was why it concentrated on it (Cloonan, 2010). Nonetheless, the state recognized western classical musical and funded it while ignoring any other genre of music and that can be one of the reasons why other genres were not as famous. In the 1960s, the recording industry had grown significantly dormant. However, the arts council continued focusing on live music and that has been the case ever since. In fact, out of all the four Arts Councils in UK, only the Scotland one has some funding set apart for the purposes of recording. It is worth noting that in the over time, the state felt that support of fine arts was no longer sustainable and that led to the broadening of the art council’s remit. There were many effects of this but the most notable is that it led to the state funding of Jazz as well (Goldstein, 1988). It was clear in the 50s that the dynamic nature of live music was rubbing against the legislations that had been put in place with an aim of regulation. It was therefore expedient for the local authorities to come up with new interpretation of the national policies in order to remain relevant to the changing environment. However, the new interpretations had to be within boundaries that would guarantee the sustenance of law and order in the society. The main problems that were realized in this area were the emergence of other forms of live music like rock’n’roll. There was also a new need to listen to the uprising new style of music like weekend Jazz festivals that were increasingly becoming popular (Gridley, 1994). The new style of music was embraced by the public but then there were some negative effects that were associated with it. For instance, there was the local state owned facilities that were not meant for such events were now being used and in addition to that, there were some traces of audience behavior that was considered by the movement as unacceptable. The result of this is that the state decided to impose bans on some acts of music from he local authority venues. b. Youths In his book, the teenage consumer, Mark Abrahams analyzes the expenditure patterns of the teenagers in comparison to that of adults. Mark observes that teenagers were expectant about getting their own money and their own places to spend the incomes they would make. This, he believes is what led to the emergence of coffee bars and other youth clubs (Bourges, 1968). Such places required music that was appealing to the young people and juke boxes were therefore introduced. It also led to the emergence of live performances in the coffee bars as well as the youth clubs (Bailey, 1992). The venues could therefore become youth venues for live music too. This happened in two ways. First, there was the acquisition of the development of venues that were exclusively for the youth and secondly, there was the sharing of venues with other people where the youth would come in for a couple of hours and enjoy the music then leave it for the rest of the people when their allocated time was over. This was especially the case during the nights and in fact, the youth gradually took over the night life of most of the clubs by the 1980s and that has remained to be the trend throughout the years (Johnson, 1989). This shift of the market trend that can be traced back to the 1960s also meant that the existing venues were either captured or they were used in different ways as was the tradition. For instance, the Liverpool’s sessions at Cavern would be turned to a youth spiced music show during the lunch hours. This was the case in many other places where the tradition MC would temporarily turn into a DJ and the youths would be entertained with their choice of music. As time elapsed the teenage consumers graduated into youth consumers which meant that they were old enough to be allowed in clubs that sold alcohol. One of the other important developments is that the teenage consumers were more than willing to spend money on their favorite musician. It is a culture that gave birth to the pop idols. The pop idols were loved not necessarily of the music they played. These musicians mostly played rock and roll a music genre that was at that time considered to be a very short lived endeavor. However, they were pop idols mainly as result of how they connected with their audience. This was fueled by the emergence of TV shows like Saturday club and six-five special. Magazines and journals that were aimed at the teenage populations were also significant in the developing of the pop idol concept. Some good examples of such magazines are Rave and Fabulous (Becker, 1982). The other important development that came onto the scene was the hit single. Musicians could rise to stardom just by doing a single composition that the audience loved. The single would earn him tickets to many live performances across the nation. This was a concept that was relatively new sine old time musicians had to work on several pieces before they could be recognized as musicians that were worst listening to (Johnson, 1989). The hit single revolution has remained with humanity to date. In the 1960s, pop mangers emerged and they were mainly tasked with the mandate of coming up with teenage circuits and they tried to achieve this by booking places in camps as well as other teenage hangout places but the cinemas became the most widely used venues. The significance of using the cinemas was that the live performances had to be tailored to fit in with the cinemas instead of the usual way of trying to fit in the prevailing season of the year. This also led to the emergence of a concoction of record selling and star making (Johnson, 1989). By the year 1967 the concept of teenage music had evolved to include the youths that were no longer teenagers. However, the live music concept that was still not understood is how the performers actually represented their audience. This is an important relationship because it ultimately impacted the way that the live music was staged. It also impacted on the type of relationship that the performers had with the producers as well as with the managers on one hand and on the other hand, the relationship that the audience had with eh managers and producers (Walton, 1972). Key impacts and ethical concerns Dick Bradley, who is one of the most acclaimed commentators of the British music of the 1950s, argues that the most important influence towards the development of live performances after the world war was the emergence of a new culture that embraced armature music performances and compositions. Bradey believes like most of the other historians that the very first do it yourself genre was the skiffle. In fact, this is probably the reason why the Beatles first began as a skiffle band. However, there are some historians that beg to differ on this widely accepted concept. They believe that the skiffle genre would never have evolved into what it was if the jazz revolutions had not come on the scene. This is because the Jazz genre is thought to have influenced the styles and sounds that were adopted in the Skiffle as well as the entire lifestyle that is associated with the music. There is in fact a very close similarity between jazz and skiffle in terms of performance and in the kind of venues that are used for both types of genres when playing live music (Houn, 1988; Thornbury, 1997). Jazz is different from most of the early types of music in the se4nce that jazz was not just written for the sake of doing some music. Jazz is arguably a genre that was originally anti-commercial. In fact the jazz revolution began as a protest on the attempt to commercialize the music. While this was a noble idea, it ended branding the music negatively since many associated the genre with the Marxist activities as a result. Jazz was therefore radically different in terms of ideology as well the way it was performed and it could not be allowed in the traditional halls used for the classical music (Thornbury, 1997; Brown and John. 2006). There had to be new venues where jazz would be played. Examples of venues that were invented were jazz clubs, folk clubs as well as street demonstrations. Needless to say, it also led to an emergence of a new breed of businessmen that were eager to cash in on the opportunity by creating venues for jazz performances. Apart from the owners of the premises, promoters, producers and even agents also came up and become actively involved in the production of the jazz music (Jang, 1989). Another important difference with the Jazz genre is that it was generally made by the by the non-European community. Jazz originated from the African American population and it was greatly influenced by the values (Berio, 1985). Blues was one of the characteristics of the black population which historians believe emerged from the desire to comfort each other due to the oppression they suffered in yester years. This is significant in the history of music since the music that came from the African Americans was not under the supervision of any producers and the musicians did not benefit from any type of musical education. They were just singing as a way of political solidarity with the oppressed people in the population (Radano, 1992). The do-it-yourself revolution led to the development of the authenticity of musicians that went on stage. The musicians had to understand the music and the genre they were performing if they were going to have any meaningful impact on the audience. The social authenticity of the musician largely depended on how he related with his audience and whether the live performance benefited from a live audience or if the audience passively watched and listened to him as he performed (Walton, 1972). This was the time in history when live performances of music incorporated a dancing audience. In fact, the musicians of this time did not give conductors to guide them in the concerts. The crowds were their most important guides who cheered them on when they were doing good and booed them down when they did a simple mistake like when they missed a beat or when they did not please the audience enough. The do-it-yourself revolution coupled with the emergence of teenagers as the main consumers of music are thought to be the most important catalysts for the emergence of the rock music business that emerged in the 1960s (Walton, 1972). Careers For most of the musicians, the live performances have always been the most important part of their income through out history of music. In fact, the onset of recording of music in the 1950s did not in any way kill the live music performances as the principal source of income for the musicians. However the emergence of the musicians’ union movements is one of the most important tools that shaped music as a career. For instance, the musicians union in UK made many attempts to try to bar the importation of music labor from other countries in a bid to make the local musicians more profitable in their own region (Abrams and Shenoy, 1973. The musicians union also advocated for the banning of music performance by the military and proposed that music groups should be charged with this responsibility. It is worth noting that the musicians union somehow succeeded in baring of music from other countries although their efforts were eventually nipped in the bad when their live music performance was later to be heavily influenced by the American styles of live performance like jazz as well as rock’n’roll. The Americanization of the British music had a huge impact on the live music performance and the careers of the performers (Radano, 1992). It is also important to not that the live unions tried to advocate for live performances in the radio stations as well as in the TV stations. The aim was to try to improve the earnings of the musicians. Other technological advancements that were thought to be detrimental to the career of music were also put to check. For instance, the advent of digital music recording seemed to threaten the career of live performances. The unions tried to advocate for the abolishing of such types of music. The importance of such unions can not be bargained. However, while it is true that they helped the musicians, it is not true across the board. The musicians that performed the classical music were the biggest beneficiaries of the union’s movements. However, the upcoming musicians that were trying to do the new and emerging genres of music generally found the whole process unfairly skewed towards protecting the classical musicians from aspects that would make it extinct including new forms of music (Walton, Ortiz. 1972). Apart from the musicians that benefited from the fruit of their labor out of the live performances, their music also gave other people fulltime careers. For instance, the producers were important in the production of the music and the promoters were equally important in helping the musicians to get the exposure that they needed. In fact, before the recording business began, the promoters were the very important in marketing the musicians since they organized circuits across the nation and even in some cases organized overseas appearances (Berliner, 1994). Conclusion By the 1960s, the most sensational musicians had a huge challenge keeping up with the demand of doing the road circuits. The live performance of music had greatly grown in just ten years. One of the most important challenges that were faced by the live music performers was how to have a huge crowd gathering in the open grounds and monetizing the event. It quickly became apparent that the change of venues for big gatherings was significant. On the flip side, the small club owners were torn between meeting the demand of their customers to continue inviting live performers and the huge fees that the musicians were now charging for the appearances. In spite of these challenges, the live music performance continued to grow over the years and it is still a very important part of music in the present day. References Abrams, Richard, and John Shenoy Jackson. 1973. Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Black World 23(1):72-74. Bailey, Derek. 1992. Improvisation: Its nature and practice in music. London: British Library National Sound Archive. Becker, Howard. 1982. Art worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berio, Luciano. 1985. Two interviews. London: Marion Boyars. Berliner, Paul F. 1994. Thinking in jazz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Born, Georgina. 1995. Rationalizing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourges, Herve. 1968. The student revolt: The activists speak. Translated by B. R. Brewster. Lon-don: Jonathan Cape. Brown, Ju and Brown, John. 2006. China, Japan, Korea Culture and Customs. North Charleston: BookSurge Cloonan Martin.2010 Live Music and music policy: some initial thoughts. IASPM Journal  20(11);34-42 Goldstein, Malcolm. 1988. Sounding the full circle. Sheffield, England: Goldstein/Frog Peak. Gridley, Mark. 1994. Jazz styles: History and analysis. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice- Hall. Houn, Fred Wei-han. 1988. Asian American music and empowerment. Views on Black American Music 3:27-32. Jang, Jon. 1989. We don't all sound alike. Views on Black American Music 3:33-38. Johnson, Tom. 1989. The voice of new music: New York City 1972-1982. Eindhoven, Netherlands: Het Apollohuis. Matt Brennan.2010. Constructing a Rough Account of British Concert Promotion History. IASPM Journal  13(12), 201-267 Radano, Ronald. 1992. Jazzin' the classics: The AACM's challenge to mainstream aesthetics. Black Music Research Journal 12(1):79-95. Simon Frith. 2012. Analysing Live Music in the UK: Findings One Year into a Three- Year Research Project. IASPM Journal  45 (112) Schwartz Elliott and Daniel Godfrey.1993.Music since1945:Issues,materials and literature. New York: Schirmer Thornbury, B.1997. The Folk Performing Arts: Traditional Culture in Contemporary society. Albany: State University of New York. Ward Philip.2011. Live music in small venues. House of Commons library, Home affairs section. Walton,Ortiz. 1972. Music: Black, white and blue. New York: William Morrow. Read More