courtesy Greater Madison Music City
A detail from the cover of the Music Recovery Framework report.
Greater Madison Music City released the Music Recovery Framework report on Dec. 8, 2022.
The latest report from the Greater Madison Music City project is out and its findings emphasize the driving force behind the project itself.
The “number one goal…is making sure that we have equity and equal opportunity for everyone in our music scene,” said Karen Reece before introducing the results of the study Dec. 8 at a presentation at Cafe Coda. “That's the lens we're approaching all of this through.”
In Madison, hip-hop performers have for years been marginalized or shut out altogether from playing many venues. One of the recommendations in the report — to create a citywide music education initiative — tries to address this head on. “We have a very strong narrative in the city that hip-hop music is violent; that music that draws large crowds of black and brown people [is] going to be dangerous,” Reece said. “That's ridiculous. We have eight years of data that proves that all genres of music basically have the same number of police calls and charges, but people still don't want to believe it.”
Created in conjunction with international consulting organization Sound Diplomacy, the Music Recovery Framework report uses the lens of music to view a spectrum of interrelated aspects of life and culture in Madison, far beyond just performing or attending a concert. At well over 100 pages it's a lot of information to process; the presentation largely focused on the report's 17 recommendations, which Reece and Rob Franklin, who lead the Greater Madison Music Project, grouped into several categories:
Zoning and planning: Establish a full-time, dedicated cultural affairs office, with focus on music. “This is one of the biggest priorities here because…then we have a central place where it's that office's responsibility to work a lot of these things out,” said Reece. “As it stands, any questions about how we can make things better have to get plugged into some other city department.” Currently, the Madison Arts Commission has one full-time employee, arts administrator Karin Wolf; the city also has one person whose job duties include a 20 percent dedication to music — Angela Puerta, a planner in the Neighborhood Planning, Preservation and Design section of the city's Department of Planning and Community Economic Development.
Related recommendations include expanding entertainment district parameters and establishing an “agent of change” policy, which would establish clearer guidelines around sound controls in new developments to help “make sure that we design our spaces that not only are conducive for music performances but also so we're not disrupting our neighbors,” said Reece. “We have a very general sound ordinance policy; it essentially boils down to are you a nuisance, or are you bothering somebody. It's an extremely subjective way of laying it out.”
Licensing and regulation: Clarify Madison’s licensing policies. Music often happens at bars and restaurants serving alcohol, and along with a liquor license there are various entertainment licenses required; determining what license is needed to present live music, or even just a jukebox and dance floor, is confusing. The recommendations also include clarifying Madison's policies around busking, and making parking easier for performers loading equipment in or out of a venue.
Marketing and tourism: Provide more and better information for audiences and performers. Recommendations highlighted by Reece included developing a best practice guide for venues, establishing an interactive cultural calendar,and planning for the future of tourism with an equity lens.
Music education: Consider adults along with kids when it comes to music education. Along with continuing and expanding youth music programs, Reece said the recommendations for a citywide music education initiative and expanded audience development can help change community attitudes about certain styles of music. The recommendations also call for incentives and training to increase diversity in who owns and manages venues, recording studios and music stories.
Economic development: Create a fair pay policy for musicians and others involved in any aspect of presenting music. “It's complicated because we're working across public-private-corporate lines, but can we come up with some guidelines, policies, education about what this should look like?” Reece said. Creating a directory of creatives and businesses is another recommendation in the report.
Reece is president of Urban Community Arts Network and vice president of research and education at Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development; Franklin works on media projects at the Madison Public Library's Bubbler program, and performs hip-hop and spoken word as Rob Dz. They were also chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Task Force on Equity in Music and Entertainment. Convened by the Madison Common Council, the committee examined issues of inequitable treatment by venues, police and the media, particularly for Madison's hip-hop community. The task force finalized its report in late 2018, with a set of 31 recommendations to increase equity for all musicians and music fans; the popular Mad Lit concert series on State Street is one result of the recommendations. Work on the task force's goals has been ongoing, and the GMMC project amplifies a number of the 2018 report's recommendations.
The GMMC's aim is far reaching, hoping to bring together “artists, promoters, venues, educators, music production companies, and audiences, in order to strategize for equity among all members of our music ecosystem in the Greater Madison Area.”
Beyond the recommendations, included in the Music Recovery Framework report are sections examining the city and county's regulatory framework around presenting music; an overview of the distribution of “music assets,” such as venues, bars and restaurants that host music, retail stores, radio, publications, studios and more; a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) drawn from a series of roundtable discussions by four work groups on economic impact, artist relations, tourism and business partnerships, along with Sound Diplomacy research; and data on the economic impact of the music business in Dane County (this segment of the report was previously released in August 2021).
The economic impact numbers are drawn from 2018 data, the most complete set of recent economic information available at the time it was compiled; between direct and indirect factors the contribution of the “music ecosystem” in Dane County totaled $636 million. Jobs related to music totaled 1.89 percent of the city's workforce, above the national average of 1.3 percent. From a data perspective 2018 may seem like a world away on the other side of a pandemic, but the numbers illustrate the scope of music's impact. “The whole point is that music is really significantly impacting a lot of other industries,” said Reece. “… It's not just musicians going out earning, not just the direct effect of having concerts, but this broad effect of how we use music and how it benefits across our entire economy.”
The full report includes a wealth of data compiled by Sound Diplomacy; many of the findings may not be surprising to those who live here (inequity is found in many places; music and other entertainment options are highly concentrated on the isthmus; financial support for arts initiatives is hard to come by). It's worth taking some time to read the SWOT analysis in the full report, mostly drawn from group discussions with local residents. Those comments speak much more directly to the concerns of performers trying to book a show, and also to the needs of audiences trying to find a scene in the greater Madison area.
The next step is to take Sound Diplomacy's recommendations and make them into something that will work for Madison, with input from the public and city staff, Reece said. “We plan to do another round of community engagement early next year where we show the recommendations to different groups and get their input on what's good, what's missing and where we should start,” said Reece in a follow-up email. “We can then beef up our workgroup and figure out some concrete steps forward.
“UCAN is committed to seeing this all the way through,” Reece said. “I get so tired of people doing reports and studies and then the reports sit on the shelf. I know all of us do. So we will keep pushing, even though it takes forever!”
Links to PDF versions of the full report, appendices and a summary version can be found at ourgmmc.org/update.
