Marc Ribot: The Care and Feeding of a Musical Margin

A detailed article about the need for subsidies for music clubs -- particularly jazz and new music clubs.

Marc Ribot: The Care and Feeding of a Musical Margin - All About Jazz, 7/7/07: "The market is failing as a means of funding downtown new music venues. The venues have either abandoned new music booking priorities (like Knitting Factory did at the end of the '90s), switched to being subsidized by musicians (like Tonic and the above mentioned new venues are doing now) or both. Musician benefit concerts and recordings, once a 'special' situation, are being normalized as a means of funding....

New music composers of the '40s through the early '60s didn't expect to make money through the live performance market; many taught to earn a living. John Cage's income wasn't based on packing a nightclub with door-fee paying, drink-buying customers; many of his history making premieres were attended by fewer people than attended an average gig at CBGB. He was supported mainly by commissions and performance fees, by grants from private and public foundations. In experimental jazz, things were much the same, although less generously funded; avant gardists through the '70s played a 'loft' scene not known for generating big bucks. Cecil Taylor worked as a dishwasher while developing his history-changing style. And when he was able to quit his day job, it was due to the backing of mostly European, subsidized festivals....

The idea behind European public arts subsidies, the reason why NYC jazz/new music artists for at least the last 40 years have played Paris, Cologne and Zurich many more times than they've played Hartford (and how many have ever played Des Moines?) is a doctrine called “the European cultural exception”, a set of government policies based on the concept that, even within a market economy, art/culture is to be treated differently from other commodities."