Canadian Musician - September/October 2020 | Page 9

FIRST
TAKE
CREATIVITY &
RESILIENCE GO
HAND-IN-HAND
By Andrew King, Editor-in-Chief
We’ve proven it time
and time again:
musicians are a
resilient bunch.
These days, it seems
like an inherent
pre-requisite – like
if there was a formal job application to call
oneself a musician in any capacity, anyone
that might hesitate before checking off
that particular box simply need not apply.
Resilience basically goes hand-in-hand
with creativity. After all, many of us are
simply compelled to play, to experiment,
write, record, and collaborate. Throwing
in the towel or “trying something else for
a while” are, in most cases, simply not an
option, and as they say, necessity is the
mother of invention.
Obviously, ours isn’t the only industry
to be significantly or repeatedly disrupted
over the past 20 years; but that said, I’m
hard pressed to think of another where
that disruption has been so simultaneously
consistent and unpredictable.
Just think of the tools we use to create
music, or the ways it’s captured, produced,
disseminated, and consumed. Most
importantly for today, though, think of
how it’s monetized and, ultimately, how
creators themselves get compensated
for it.
Since 1999, the goal posts have been
moving pretty much non-stop. Piracy
and the corresponding devaluation of
recorded music as a product made live
performance the main source of revenue
for most. Since, streaming has largely
curbed illegal downloading, but most artists’
bottom lines don’t look much different
from before. As many in the industry were
advocating for change in that business
model and it even felt like our chorus of
voices was loud enough to start moving
the needle, along came COVID-19 to
basically wipe out the still-somewhatprofitable
side of most full-time musicians’
careers
But we’re still here. Still making (orchestrated)
noise and finding ways to share it
with people.
I was on a call earlier this week with Toronto-based
artist Suzi Kory to talk about
her DIY drive-in country music festival,
Love Revolution, that she and a scrappy
group of collaborators delivered in mid-
July after just three weeks of planning.
“It just made perfect sense and my gut
instinct was saying: 'Just do it, even if you
don’t know what you’re doing; it doesn’t
matter.’ And that’s exactly what happened.
I just jumped right into it,” she told me.
Look at what Dan Mangan, Laura Simpson,
and their team at Side Door have
done to help artists all around the world
produce, promote, and monetize their
virtual shows – and of course, look at how
good and, in some cases, groundbreaking
some of those virtual shows have been.
Look at how we’ve come together to
support each other, to support the technicians
and venues and journalists and all
the other cogs in this big wheel of ours;
a wheel that’s dented and rusted and not
even that round anymore but still keeps
on rolling.
None of this is particularly novel or
revelatory, but a part of it that might be:
not only are we a resilient bunch, but that
resilience seems to grow in tandem with
the size of our community.
Let’s be clear: things are looking pretty
bleak for a lot of us, and there are no sure
signs of that changing any time soon. Yet
through this whole mess, I haven’t heard a
single story about anyone “quitting” music.
Confusion, discouragement, frustration,
fear, even rage aren’t in short supply, but
I don’t know one person that’s picked up
their bat and gone home; on the contrary,
I’ve only heard of people picking up an
instrument or trying to make beats for the
first time or signing up for virtual lessons.
Our community is growing, and as our
friend Harrison Fine of Fine Productions
predicted on this very page last issue, a silver
lining of these strange times will be an
influx in fresh new sounds and creations.
It’s been no walk in the park; figuratively
and literally, it’s quite the opposite
of that, and yet look at us. Still here, still
performing, still recording, still channeling
the emotions and experiences and ideas
of the wider populace into art that brings
us solace, brings us together, and helps us
to process what’s going on.
We’re a resilient bunch indeed, and
I’ll continue hoping and working to
make it so that we don’t have to prove it
so damn often.
Ð CANADIAN MUSICIAN 9