Industry sings praises of music awards

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/10/2005 (7587 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT has been an eventful couple of weeks in Manitoba’s burgeoning cultural industries.

Most exciting, of course, was the arrival of Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt and his movie crew, who used Winnipeg’s Exchange District to stand in for the American Wild West in the 1880s.

Less thrilling to the star-struck masses, but heartening to establishment music poobahs, was the strong showing by Manitobans at the Western Canadian Music Awards in Vancouver last Sunday.

Manitoba acts, led by pop groups Nathan and Waking Eyes, took home six of the 21 main awards. In the behind-the-scenes “industry” awards, Manitobans finished first in five of 12 categories.

After a few years of disappointing showings at both the WCMAs and the Junos, this was a welcome result. It’s proof, we tell ourselves, of our vigorous creative community, which historically has produced talent at a rate far outstripping our measly four per cent of the Canadian population.

Pitt’s Jesse James movie, mind you, did not decide on a Winnipeg location shoot because of our vigorous creative community.

It came here because we were the cheapest alternative. Our 45 per cent film-tax credit, designed to lure out-of-province producers, is a decade-old public policy that has gone a long way to developing our production industry, now worth between $60 million and $100 million.

American “service contracts,” as they’re called, like Shall We Dance?, Category 7 and Jesse James, allow crew members to cobble together a living, even if they are treated somewhat like Brazilian coffee-bean pickers.

That way they are around when local filmmakers, such as writer-directors Guy Maddin and Sean Garrity and producers Kim Todd and Lisa Meeches, need them for their locally developed projects.

On the music side, however, the model doesn’t hold. Other than positive advertising, what is the economic benefit accorded Manitoba when a music act hits the big time?

Major record labels usually demand that their acts record in Toronto or Los Angeles with a producer and studio musicians known to them.

Album design and marketing also get handled that way. The bands hit the road for extensive tours and barely spend time or a dime here.

The Guess Who’s Randy Bachman moved to Vancouver. Brad Roberts of the Crash Test Dummies went to New York. Chantal Kreviazuk left for Toronto, and then Los Angeles.

The Waking Eyes’ WCMA-winning CD, Video Sound, was recorded by Warner Music in Toronto with a Toronto producer. Roots band the Duhks did their new CD in the U.S.

The pop quartet Nathan, it should be said, did record its independent CD Jimson Weed at Private Ear studios in Winnipeg but they did it for the Vancouver-based label Nettwerk. The Wailin’ Jennys, currently the toast of the Manitoba music establishment, are not making their new album in Winnipeg.

Yet Manitoba has developed a significant bureaucracy to support the music industry here. The arm’s-length agency Manitoba Film and Sound administers $400,000 in loans and grants to Manitoba acts.

A decade ago, the Manitoba Audio Recording Industry Association consisted of one person in a ratty office. Now the lobby group employs eight people in nice digs and has a taxpayer-funded budget of $1 million. They are expected in a few weeks to release an economic impact study of the Manitoba music industry, the first ever. No doubt it will show that everything is rosy.

Just yesterday Statistics Canada released figures saying that record sales in Canada fell 18 per cent between 2000 and 2003, and almost 21 per cent since the 1998 peak.

Things are not likely to improve. Many experts predict that most popular music will be downloaded from the Internet, serving as advertising for musicians who will make their income by performing live tours.

If this happens, you have to wonder at the value of training and subsidizing acts that will leave town, much like doctors who graduate and move to Arizona.

Perhaps these music dollars are better spent on developing the agents, producers and studio musicians who make a living in this community.

Maybe we should be giving tax credits to the likes of U2 and Green Day to come to Winnipeg to record their albums, just as we get Pitt and J.Lo to come here now.

What about developing the video game sector, which is the fastest growing cultural industry in the world (porn excepted) and which apparently earns greater revenues than Hollywood?

Brad Pitt could come back to test market the Altona PlayStation III. All we need is a CEO of a new provincial agency.

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca