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Music scene: the crisis is hereJanuary 9th, 2009
For some weeks now, we hear a lot about the financial crisis. A bank goes bankrupt, another one loses hundreds of millions, some big companies considered solid falter. The media go on and on about the consequences on the world economy, but we hear almost nothing about the effects on the art scene. Yet its consequences promise to be disastrous.
More recently, announcements are succeeding one another: Yamaha has reduced its piano production and suppressed jobs, two big monthly magazines on culture merged to face up to the crisis, General Motors withdrawed as the lead sponsor of the Montreal International Jazz Festival… The examples are numerous, showing that the crisis is affecting the arts.
The fact is that classical music is essentially subsidized by private sponsoring and/or state funds. States are now drawing huge sums to bail out banks and companies in difficulty, leading to savings in less “visible” budgets (culture, for example), and the private sponsoring to tick over, the said companies having less liquid assets for sponsoring.
Now a question which concerns me: who will then subsidize festivals, which are necessary for musicians to make a living? Who will fund municipal or national cultural policies? Will we have to radically change our work habits in order to still be able to make a living from our art? To go in for something new?
Not that easy to see through this mess, and even less easy to know what’s going to be cooked up for us!