Ellery Eskelin <eskelin@earthlink.net> wrote: Herb Levy <herb@eskimo.com> wrote:
I'm not sure the grant process is much more brutal than getting club gigs or record contracts
Perhaps, but I see that as no great virtue. Understood.
I certainly don't think of it as any kind of remedy to those situations. It's just another option that's somewhat more clearly public
I don't know...I've always thought that grants were supposed to be a way to recognize artists in a way that the free market does not, at least with any consistency. Maybe I'm wrong on this? Grantmaking certainly works in a way that's distinct from the commercial market, but it has it's own built-in strengths and weaknesses. Like every selection process, some things won't get through. & some of those things that aren't well served by the grant process are also not well served by more standard commercial processes.
and, because in most instances, the panel makeup changes periodically, more open to some kinds of vagaries that I guess you're referring to when you use the word "lottery."
I used the word lottery because once you remove the handful of submissions that clearly don't meet the prerequisite guidelines the rest might as well be chosen out of a hat, regardless of who's on the panel and how often that panel changes. Ultimately, the idea of panels and of changing the panels is to make the process almost exactly NOT random as such, any particular panel having reasons for making the grants that they do, but, especially when looked at over time, the process IS largely random. Not that a panel is incapable of rewarding deserving artists, but due more to the fact that there are numerous deserving submissions that will never be funded due to financial limitations. True again, but rightly or wrongly I think the grant situation is seen as being more altruistic and fair in some way, in counterpoint to the purely free market system. And there are the post grant press releases that come from these organizations taking great pride in having determined who is deserving and the accompanying inference that these are necessarily the best folks to fund. Is this really any different than winning a critics poll? And then there's the cache of prestige associated with them. Of course I don't blame the grant presenters, they're doing the best they can and they should continue to do so. I just wanted to point out that the system of giving out grants is really just as f****ed up from a musician's standpoint as trying to get a gig or record deal, maybe more. Of course, some folks are better at it than others, for reasons usually having little to do with music, as has been covered. Exactly. However, it's probably good to point out that in jazz and improvised music there are usually some kinds of subsidies supporting whatever the endeavor once you scratch the surface. Festivals often receive corporate support, smaller presenting organizations often receive support from local businesses or regional arts councils, recording labels are frequently supported by more popular divisions of the company in the case of majors or run by someone who can afford to lose money year after year in the case of many independents. Even these grassroots tours throughout the US are often supported by a couple/few enthusiastic and industrious music fans in each town who devote their time, energy and money to producing concerts that would otherwise not happen. If the whole thing were to have to depend completely on the number of butts on the seats...well...you get the picture... Actually, virtually all art of any kind is subsidized to a great extent. Limiting my examples to music, in addition to the "alternative" economy that you describe which supports the music we usually discuss around here, look at the corporate underwriting for tours by hugely successful bands like the Rolling Stones (as if they somehow wouldn't make money otherwise, eh?), or the fact that the surplus income generated by pop mega-hits enables the major record companies to release a lot of other recordings (& yeah, I realize that this process mainly puts a lot of musicians in debt unless they invest the greater portion of their advance), etc. Or hey, look at how Tzadik is structured so that a few comparatively good sellers support the production of a lot of discs with more limited sales potential. -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb@eskimo.com