Paula Lin­do

That the fund­ing for Cre­ativeTT had been se­vere­ly cut in the na­tion­al bud­get was one of the more star­tling bits of in­for­ma­tion to come out of the Mu­sicTT Stake­hold­er En­gage­ment Ses­sion held at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies on Oc­to­ber 1.

Cre­ativeTT board mem­ber Shya­mal Chan­dra­daths­ingh not­ed re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­tures were cut by $2.9 mil­lion to $7.2 mil­lion while the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme was re­duced from $7 mil­lion to $4.25 mil­lion to be split be­tween FilmTT, Fash­ion TT and Mu­sicTT.

The ses­sion was chaired by Mu­sicTT gen­er­al man­ag­er Jeanelle Fron­tin. It in­tro­duced the stake­hold­ers to Sian Evans, Palo­ma Med­i­na, and Mar­tin El­bourne, who are, re­spec­tive­ly, head of glob­al op­er­a­tions, re­search man­ag­er, and ad­vi­so­ry board mem­ber of Sound Diplo­ma­cy. The UK-based com­pa­ny will be re­spon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing the Na­tion­al Strate­gic Ac­tion Plan for the Mu­sic In­dus­try of T&T.

The stake­hold­ers were asked what con­sti­tut­ed suc­cess for them, what role they want­ed Mu­sicTT to play, how they charged for their ser­vices and why they hadn't formed an as­so­ci­a­tion to lob­by the Gov­ern­ment.

Josanne Leonard, who had un­suc­cess­ful­ly ten­dered for the de­vel­op­ment of the strate­gic plan, was at the con­sul­ta­tion. She said Sound Diplo­ma­cy's lack of knowl­edge about the cul­ture and mu­sic his­to­ry of T&T would ham­per their ef­forts to come up with a strate­gic plan. She al­so said Mu­sicTT needs to en­sure it is not com­pet­ing with busi­ness cre­atives who have made their spaces in the in­dus­try and in­stead needs to work with them.

Leonard stat­ed that eco­nom­ic da­ta cap­ture is lim­it­ed, and there needs to be map­ping of the sec­tor; there are not many econ­o­mists ex­pe­ri­enced enough with the cre­ative sec­tor. De­spite this, she al­so said stud­ies have al­ready been done which could pro­vide the da­ta which Sound Diplo­ma­cy would need for its plan.

Fron­tin said im­ple­men­ta­tion of the plan would be the biggest prob­lem and asked the artistes present to work with Mu­sicTT to con­tribute to­wards mak­ing the plan re­al­is­tic. Fron­tin said Mu­sicTT is hop­ing to launch the Strate­gic Ini­tia­tive by April 2017.

Evans said a record­ing stu­dio for use by artistes is part of the pro­pos­al be­ing put for­ward, while the strate­gic plan is for ex­port­ing all gen­res of T&T mu­sic in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. She said the com­pa­ny was will­ing to have in­di­vid­ual Skype in­ter­views with artistes to hear their con­cerns.

Most of the artistes agreed their de­f­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess was be­ing able to earn a liv­ing do­ing mu­sic. Oth­er artistes said they saw them­selves as en­tre­pre­neurs and had ed­u­cat­ed them­selves in the busi­ness as­pect of the in­dus­try. They called on Mu­sicTT to pro­vide more train­ing pro­grammes for new artistes in copy­right and oth­er as­pects of the in­dus­try.

The artistes al­so called for mu­sic his­to­ry and men­tor­ship pro­grammes so that knowl­edge gained could be passed on, as new gen­er­a­tions think every­thing be­gins with them.

On the is­sue of fees, some artistes said they don't have a set fee and ne­go­ti­ate with each cus­tomer on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis. Oth­er artistes said they charge a min­i­mum fee and ad­di­tion­al fees are then added de­pend­ing on ser­vices be­ing pro­vid­ed. They said peo­ple are usu­al­ly will­ing to spend mon­ey on every­thing ex­cept pay­ing the artist, and asked if Mu­sicTT could come up with a fee struc­ture.

A ques­tion from Evans re­vealed that there are very few book­ing agents in T&T, with an artist's man­ag­er do­ing mar­ket­ing, book­ings and all the be­hind the scenes work.Some artistes said they have to pay for air­time for their mu­sic to be heard.

DJ and en­ter­tain­er Adri­an Hack­shaw aka Third Bass, said Mu­sicTT needs to be a mid­dle­man be­tween artistes and the Gov­ern­ment. He al­so ad­vised those present that they couldn't re­ly on­ly on ra­dio to play their mu­sic, and to al­so look to the In­ter­net and oth­er op­tions.

Oth­er artistes dis­agreed, say­ing that T&T's mu­sic mar­ket re­lies on a ra­dio cul­ture, so that is the best way to get mu­sic out to the pop­u­la­tion. Hack­shaw said mu­sic pro­duced by lo­cal artistes had to be of a cer­tain qual­i­ty to com­pete with in­ter­na­tion­al artistes, even on lo­cal ra­dio.

An­tho­ny Ashe said T&T artistes could not want to com­pete with in­ter­na­tion­al artistes at their own game. He ad­vo­cat­ed for a re­turn to the rhythm and rhyme of T&T's in­dige­nous mu­sic, so that their mu­sic could be re­spect­ed as be­ing orig­i­nal. Many artistes stat­ed that hav­ing a con­tent quo­ta in place would help get more lo­cal mu­sic on the air as well as help to in­crease the stan­dards of lo­cal mu­sic.

En­ter­tain­ment lawyer Car­la Par­ris said in­ter­na­tion­al artistes have stat­ed that lo­cal artistes need to build their so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing and de­vel­op a brand, so that when they do col­lab­o­ra­tions, there is al­ready some­one to mar­ket to. She said if in­fra­struc­tur­al as­pects are put in place, along with artiste de­vel­op­ment, book­ing agents in­stead of man­agers, and gaps in the sec­tor are filled in, it is pos­si­ble for rev­enue gen­er­a­tion to oc­cur.

Fron­tin said artistes need to band to­geth­er to fix the sys­tem and see what they can do to help each oth­er. She al­so said the ra­dio broad­cast­ers need to put their ears to the ground more and the Gov­ern­ment needs to give more mon­ey than they are cur­rent­ly do­ing.

Some artistes asked for a for­mal space they could use for shows in­stead of be­ing tak­en ad­van­tage of by venue own­ers who of­ten do not pay them to per­form. Oth­er artistes said peo­ple looked for too many hand­outs, and if they didn't know how they were go­ing to make back the tens of thou­sands of dol­lars they spent on their mu­sic, they shouldn't spend it.

One per­son said bring­ing the mu­sic com­mu­ni­ty to­geth­er is al­most im­pos­si­ble be­cause artistes are too far gone in­to the crab-in-a bar­rel men­tal­i­ty where every­one wants tobe in charge, in­stead of help­ing each oth­er.

In­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty spe­cial­ist Heather Bald­win-Mc­Dow­ell said the pub­lic needs to have a prop­er re­spect for cre­ative per­sons. She called on Mu­sicTT to or­gan­ise a na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme on mu­sic his­to­ry, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and cre­ative as­sets. She said boot­leg­ging is a ma­jor prob­lem for lo­cal artistes and the pub­lic should know how much time and mon­ey artistes put in­to cre­at­ing mu­sic.

Garth Wal­cott of the Great So­ci­ety and Shel­don Manoo of the In­dige­nous Move­ment stat­ed they have been do­ing work with artistes which re­sults in in­creased air time and pay­ment for their work, and urged those present to find out more about their or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Fron­tin al­so re­spond­ed to ques­tions sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly. She said an in­cu­ba­tor busi­ness mod­el is in the works and should be im­ple­ment­ed by Jan­u­ary 2017. Mu­sicTT is al­so dis­cussing with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (TATT) the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a lo­cal con­tent quo­ta, but first they need to col­lect base­line da­ta to know how much con­tent is be­ing played now.

Fron­tin said Mu­sicTT was hap­py to cre­ate link­ages for artistes with the fash­ion and film in­dus­tries through Fash­ionTT and FilmTT, so they could col­lab­o­rate on projects.

With re­gards to the three com­pet­ing per­for­mance rights or­gan­i­sa­tions in T&T–COTT, TTCO and Awe­some–Fron­tin said Mu­sicTT is work­ing on a so­lu­tion to the is­sue.

What artistes want

�2 To be able to make a liv­ing off their mu­sic

�2 A con­tent quo­ta to get more lo­cal mu­sic on the air

�2 An af­ford­able per­for­mance space

�2 More train­ing pro­grammes in copy­right and oth­er as­pects of the in­dus­try

�2 Mu­sic his­to­ry and men­tor­ship pro­grammes