We are more confident now, and more creative than ever and employing our improvisational impulse in ways that will keep us resilient and bring New Orleans a sustainability we haven't had for awhile, if ever. Poverty, neglect, racism, joblessness, social and economic inequality were all on the rise before Katrina and the disaster caused by the failure of the Federal Levee System only made matters worse in the years since.
New Orleans is a city of contradictions. A place where opulence and poverty, sin and salvation, celebration and depression coexist. A city known both for its richness of culture and the poverty of its populace, a city where at the dawn of a new century racial and class divisions continue and where the income-gap has become a yawning, ever-widening abyss, contributing to a host problematic social issues. Mention New Orleans anywhere in the world and you’ll receive instant acknowledgment of its wealth of musical and cultural attributes , followed quickly by an inquiry as to how the city is coping with its ongoing problems of poverty, crime, and poor public education. This paper is concerned with this question in the context of what has been termed the new emerging ‘cultural economy’, and will attempt to explore possible ways the city’s music and culture may be utilized within various current economic development efforts to reduce the incidence of poverty in the city.
What is the new cultural economy? Definitions can be hard to come by, as it remains an emerging concept that in many respects is still developing, so it is worth looking into several that have been put forth in recent years. Severyn T. Bruyn, (http://www2.bc.edu/~bruyn), offers one definition:
“Cultural economy is about how a symbolic life is generated in midst of scarcity and about the tension of differences among people in everyday life. Culture is linked with the economy through symbolic interaction and broadly, through human history. This broad inquiry begins with primitive symbols and rituals and moves forward through history to include today's market system.”
The World Bank offers a two definitions of culture in relation to their Culture-Poverty Initiative:
“The term "culture" has two usages or definitions within the World Bank. The first, wider, definition describes particular shared values, beliefs, knowledge, skills and practices that underpin behavior by members of a social group at a particular point in time (with potentially good and bad effects on processes of poverty reduction). The second definition describes creative expression, skills, traditional knowledge and cultural resources that form part of the lives of people and societies, and can be a basis for social engagement and enterprise development. These include, for example, craft and design, oral and written history and literature, music, drama, dance, visual arts, celebrations, indigenous knowledge of botanical properties and medicinal applications, architectural forms, historic sites, and traditional technologies. The research-learning program includes both usages of the term culture, to the extent they affect the Bank's core mandate to reduce poverty and should potentially affect how we do business.”
However, in discussing local and regional economic development efforts within the cultural economy, the following definition of the ‘creative economy’ may be most useful:
“At the core of the creative economy are those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent, and which have their potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property.” – Creative Industries Task Force, Creative Industries Mapping Document (Dept. of Culture, Media and Sports 1998 U.K.)
But how can these definitions be applied to the development of workable and effective strategies for poverty reduction? As Bruyn said, “culture is linked with the economy .... broadly, through human history.” So a look back is warranted.
Karl Marx developed the ‘Mode of Production’ theory in which he said that the key element within the industrial economy was the discovery and application of new sources of energy. Manuel Castells brings this forward into the information age to introduce the similar concept of the ‘Mode of Development’ in which the key element is developing new forms and sources of information.
Where are these new forms and sources of information, knowledge, and ideas? And how can they, upon discovery, be applied in a way that generates jobs, meaningful livelihoods and wealth for individuals and communities? Discovering the answer to that question seems to lie initially in doing away with old assumptions and developing new definitions of what knowledge is..... and where it is, who has it and who doesn’t.
It seems from the various definitions of the creative and cultural economy that have been put forth in recent years, such as those cited above, that one of the old assumptions that needs to be done away with in order to unearth these new sources of knowledge and information essential to the new economy is that the poor are poor because they are unknowledgeable and therefore have nothing to offer. The notion of doing away with such an essentially baseless assumption is one that Albert Murray fiercely advocates in The Omni-Americans and is also the basis of Paulo Friere’s classic, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, both of which members of the New Orleans School Board and local economic development leaders would do well to read, and re-read, given their own obvious low level of comprehension.
The recent emergence of grassroots innovation networks, that are bottom-up initiatives that recognize that innovation does not come solely from the province at the top, provide evidence that the old assumptions, and with them old ineffective economic models, are beginning to be placed in their proper place in the past. In addition, these grassroots innovation networks provide an alternative to urban growth coalitions that are typically made up of business leaders acting ostensibly in the interest of community, but in actuality more in their own self-interest as revealed in the research of John Logan and Henry Molotch. One example in New Orleans of a grassroots innovation network is the recently formed Central City Renaissance Alliance, made up almost exclusively of people who live and work in the long neglected area of the city, where Census Bureau statistics reveal a median household income $1,000.00 below the Federal poverty line of $16,000.00. And while the area has been largely neglected since the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, its location, bordering the Garden District and the CBD, has it of late being eyed by developers as large portions of the Magnolia and Guste housing developments are torn down, raising the distinct possibility of many long time residents along with their vital culture being displaced in the process. However the area also has a long tradition of successful resistance to dominance by outside forces that will hopefully prevent future displacement.
In order to address the concepts within the context of the local New Orleans cultural economy, again, a look back at the city’s rich musical and cultural heritage is necessary. The World Bank, as cited earlier, maintains in the second of its two-fold definition of culture as an asset and resource for poverty reduction, that the, “... second definition describes creative expression, skills, traditional knowledge and cultural resources that form part of the lives of people and societies, and can be a basis for social engagement and enterprise development.” Henry Kmen in his paper, Music in Early New Orleans, details the popular and well-attended Balls, held with such frequency in the city that new American Governor Claiborne felt compelled to write to then U.S. Secretary of State James Madison of his concern that residents of the city spent entirely too much time engaged in frivolous rather productive activity, indicating his feeling that some regulation of such activity was called for. However, the Balls served an important function to New Orleans in general, and to its economy, as music and dance allowed the ethnically diverse population of the time to transcend the language barriers that prevented other avenues of social engagement. And this frequent manner of social engagement created many spin-off businesses, or ‘enterprise development’ in the words of the World Bank, from the making of costumes and masks for attendees to wear to the balls, to the employ of musicians and bands to perform at the balls, transportation to and from the balls, and more. By 1840 there were more than 80 ballrooms or dance halls in the city. In turn many musicians from throughout the region migrated to New Orleans knowing there was abundant employment for them here, that in turn spurred the opening of many music stores that sold and rented instruments and led to the development of a thriving music publishing industry to keep up with the demand for sheet music. It appears in retrospect that the balls were responsible for the formation of the initial agglomeration industries that today serve the city’s tourism industry so well.
Similarly, the city’s long held tradition of social aid and pleasure clubs can be viewed as a predecessor or early model of today’s grassroots innovation networks.
New Orleans R&B heyday from the late 1940’s to the early 1960’s provides another example of grassroots innovation and enterprise development stemming from social engagement and within an area of concentrated poverty, as such areas are usually referred to as, centered as it was around the Dew Drop Inn across the street from the Magnolia housing project. Another way of looking at the developments if thus time and another term that might be applied, to do away with old assumptions and within the context of the cultural economy, might be ‘concentrated creativity’. The Dew Drop Inn was also a hotel and and many of the musicians that played there on a regular basis also lived there, or in the surrounding neighborhood, fostering the regular social engagement and interaction that led to innovation and enterprise development of the kind that then attracted business, as independent record labels flocked to the city to record the New Orleans sound. Frank Pania was more than just a night spot and hotel owner, he was also a booking agent, regularly booking regional tours for the musicians that performed at the Dew Drop. And for a period, many of those New Orleans artists dominated the national music charts. Some credit the British Invasion as the reason for the descendency of New Orleans music, but Dr. John, in his book Hoodoo Moon, describes the times following the election of District Attorney Jim Garrison, who despite being elected with support of the city’s club owners, chose to engage in regulation of the social engagement that was occurring around the city’s many music clubs, raiding clubs for violation of the Jim Crow laws and regularly arresting musicians, leading many, including Dr. John, to head to Los Angeles or New York, causing a weakening of the grassroots innovation network of the time a lessening of the social engagement and interaction that produced such an abundance of creative activity.
Following this period, the area’s oil and gas industry was thriving, providing employment for many. But this was employment of a different kind, organized in a different way that was unlike the independent self-employment and entrepreneurship that had been engaged in by generations of New Orleans craftsmen, artisans, and musicians. In addition, the new markets that emerged from the oil and gas industry were so capital intensive that entry and participation in them required the investment of huge amounts of financial resources unavailable to those that had for so long engaged in independent self-employment.
The oil bust however once again brought to the fore the value of the city’s creative industries as tourism moved in to take the place of oil and gas and give rise to what is now being increasingly viewed as - the cultural economy! Although this position of the tourism industry as the region’s now dominant industry and largest employer presents a number of problems, perceptual and otherwise, in utilizing music and culture to reduce poverty, as well as address the problems of the city’s failing public educational system. The tourism industry’s sustainability as the city’s dominant industry is dependent upon the continued maintenance of large pools of low wage labor, making it in turn necessary to devalue the individual creativity activity it depends upon. And as the largest industry and employer in the city the tourism industry has the attention and ears of the city’s leaders and decision makers, resulting in its overriding influence in the direction of the development of the creative industries. Examples abound, the most notable being Richard Florida’s Creative Index in which he ranked the top 50 most creative cities in America and in which New Orleans ranked number 42. Civic and business leaders were aghast at the ranking with many referring to Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnagie Mellon University, as a quack. However, the index was not based on the number of creative people in a given city but rather whether those creative people that resided there were valued by the community and able to earn a living through their creative efforts and such is not the case in New Orleans, where the music industry is not thought of as an industry in itself but rather just a part of the tourism industry, thus accounting for the feelings of many of the city’s musicians that they are just sharecroppers to the tourism industry. Another example of the domination of the tourism industry is direction of development of the music industry is the August, 2004 Jazz Town Hall meeting held by the city’s Office of Economic Development/ Arts & Entertainment/ Music Business Development. Tourism industry officials were present in full force and the entire discussion, directed by Scott Aiges, Director of Music Business development for the city, centered around ways to import audiences to New Orleans, ostensibly so musicians will have more employment and be able to earn more. However, this notion runs contrary to the music industry rule of thumb that audience development and expansion, (that results in increased income), requires musicians to regularly release product (CDs) and to tour in promotion of their products and services, ideally hitting each market twice per year. Musicians present at this meeting expressed much frustration with this, feeling that their needs were being ignored in favor of the tourism industry’s needs.
While there have been numerous efforts over the last decade or so to develop the city’s music into a full-fledged industry in its own right, most of these efforts have proved ineffective due in large part to the lack of accurate identification of primary and secondary stakeholders, and outreach to and inclusion of these stakeholders in the development process. An example of this is Greater New Orleans Inc.’s (formerly MetroVision) formation of an arts and entertainment industry cluster to develop a strategic plan to move the development of the creative industries forward. Greater New Orleans Inc. is the economic development arm of the Regional Chamber of Commerce. Out of the approximately 40 cluster members there were only one or two who were working musicians and as a result there was much distrust of this cluster within the city’s music community, which in fact proved warranted as the cluster met for 14 months and paid Dadco Consulting $50,000 to develop the strategic plan, only to never meet again toward implementation upon completion.
Similarly, there is a distinct lack of interface and collaboration within city government to marshall resources that could result in effectively moving development of the music industry forward and creating spin-off entrepreneurial activity and jobs. An example of the lack of interface includes that between the City's office of Music Business Development and Arts and Entertainment with the City of New Orleans Department of Economic Development, the Workforce Investment Board or the city’s Job 1 office, which provides the area with workforce development and training. A large component of the Workforce Investment Act passed by Congress involves entrepreneurial training and provides for investment into entrepreneurial activity. The development of microlending groups and organizations, such as the Newcorp and the Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s SEED (Supporting Enfranchising Economic Development) locally and MEDAL (Microenterprise Development Assoc. of Louisiana) state wide, grew out of the entrepreneurial investment component of the Workforce Investment Act and concerted interface by the city’ s Department of Economic Development’s offices of Arts and Entertainment and Music Business Development that should be considered essential to developing the music industry and creating artist enterprises, small businesses, and jobs. Nor is there interface between the Workforce Investment Board and Job 1 and the Music Business Co-op , a cooperative endeavor between the City and the Tipitina’s Foundation. Dialogue and interface between these two should begin toward effective collaboration on training the city’s low-income, unemployed and underemployed in non-performing aspects of the music and entertainment business in preparation for and to facilitate the effective entry and participation of this population into the new markets of the emerging growing cultural economy. Currently the sole target of the Music Business Co-op has been musicians. Musicians interviewed by the New Orleans Blues Project have expressed frustration with this, as it seems to most that the city expects them to be their own booking agents, managers, record labels, marketers and promoters, accountants, secretaries, publicists, and floor sweepers, feeling that is too many hats to wear and wondering why the same expectations are not heaped upon producers of products and services in other industries. Wearing that many hats leaves musicians little time for their primary endeavor and fails to expand the creation of the jobs base that potentially surrounds the area’s large talent base and allow for the retention locally of the economic benefits of the music. Higher earning artists in New Orleans currently all have managers, booking agents, publicists, and in many cases record labels, located far outside the region, resulting in an economic drain of million upon millions of dollars from the local economy annually. Most of these higher earning artists would much prefer to have managers, agents in publicists locally, but there are none to speak of...indicating that is imperative that we must foster and facilitate the development of this type of activity and employment to stem the drain.
A glaring example of the lack of interface is the one by principals within just the city’s Department of Economic Development - the July, 2003 RFP for groups or partnerships to consult, develop, and implement the city’s “Comprehensive Event & Municipal Marketing Plan” that came from the city’s Marketing Department which, like the offices of Arts and Entertainment and Music Business Development, is part and parcel of Department of Economic Development (and physically located in the same hallway) yet several inquiries about the progress of the plan and the possibility for integration of producers within the city’s creative industries in the development and implementation of it, have resulted in blank unknowing stares - they literally have no idea what is going on in an office just a couple of doors down the hall !
The following is an excerpt of a study done by Steven Tepper in relation to strategies for developing a region’s creative assets, especially those of music, that puts forth a more worthwhile strategy than many of those developed locally:
(full text available at www.culturalpolicy.org)
Creative Assets and the Changing Economy - Steven Jay Tepper
"Finally, I would argue that it is better to think about the creative industries
at the local and regional levels, where policy issues related to economic and
workforce development are more obvious and where it might be easier to find
synergies between the different parts of the sector—nonprofit and commercial,
large and small firms, new media and old media.
As one example of a local strategy, Walter Santagata (2002) has argued for the importance of “cultural districts” as sources of sustainable economic growth (furniture districts in Italy, textile districts in Milan, or wine districts in France) and has identified several policy interventions to help cultural districts thrive.
There are also numerous examples from European cities (Manchester, Glasgow) of policies designed to build an infrastructure to support small and emerging cultural businesses in such areas as design, music, digital media, and broadcast. Such policies range from establishing industry forums for the identification of sectoral needs to creating publicly supported venture capital funds dedicated to the promotion of products and services made by creative industries. Other strategies include investing in digital media labs; creating low-cost production facilities; supporting art and technology studios; arranging expos to showcase new designs or local design talent; organizing trade missions around particular products or services;
providing business development support and training ; creating employment bulletins; providing managed workspace and cheap short-term leases for artists; and offering tour support for new musical acts
These types of local policies, described by Justin O’Connor as 'cultural production strategies', are where the rubber hits the road in the creative industry debates—and where industrial approaches to the cultural sector make perfect sense."
I came upon Tepper’s study as I was developing the Blues Project’s program model, “Community Development Through Music” designed to be a workforce development and entrepreneurial training program in non-performing aspects of the music and entertainment business. Additionally, it is an initiative that is targeted toward the low-income unemployed and underemployed and those considered low-educational achievers in the traditional institutional sense. Despite being considered low-educational achievers, this population exhibits a high creative acumen and qualified understanding and knowledge of the music and culture of the city that can be employed to offset the negative effects of their low educational achievement. Also within that high creative acumen is a highly developed independent entrepreneurial spirit that is made evident by looking at the history of creative activity engaged in within the cities poorer neighborhoods like Central City and Treme, and both of which have had grassroots innovation networks in place for many decades in the form of social aid and pleasure clubs, neighborhood music clubs, vernacular churches, Mardi Gras Indian groups, that, in the words of Michael P. Smith, “.... continue to be a watershed for rhythm and consciousness and a source of constant inspiration”, as he wrote in his piece, Behind The Lines: The Black Mardi Gras Indians And The New Orleans Second Line. These traits can easily be viewed, in Manuel Castells’ ‘Mode Development’ line of thinking as the key element of ‘new forms and sources of information’ that forms the basis of the information or cultural economy and its related new creative markets. These new creative markets are easier to enter for the low-income, as they are, as mentioned earlier in this paper, less capital intensive, and as a result possess great potential for entrepreneurial and small business development within poorer neighborhoods like Central City and Treme. That potential is heightened by the growing mico-lending movement as cited earlier, providing access to capital to those normally excluded as result of their low-incomes and lack of financial assets. There is beginning to be recognition within the cultural economy that an individual’s creative abilities are an asset. In Central City, the location of the Hope Credit Union by the Enterprise Development Corporation of the Delta there, and its offering of Individual Development Accounts where upon an individual saving $1,000.00 a match of as much as an additional $3,000.00 is provided, may spur the independent entrepreneurial activity that develops into small businesses that provides jobs. Certainly such developments within the micro-lending movement provides much-needed resources toward the development of artist enterprises and lends the best hope to continued growth of the area’s music industry.
Additionally, within the music and entertainment industry at large, one of the primary forms of investment is sponsorship, and a source that has not been explored or exploited locally. Entertainment sponsorship is an $11 billion dollar industry in North America and can be a source of investment to provide the tour support for musical acts that Tepper encourages in his study. Developing sponsorship as a source of investment however will likely require an effective collaboration between local grassroots innovation networks and the larger, non-grassroots public and private sector decision makers, a difficult task given the mistrust at the grassroots of city’s business and civic leaders, but perhaps not insurmountable, as the top, perhaps, within the new cultural economy needs the bottom more now than ever before.
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