South African musicians are seeking their place in the limelight. Gwen Ansell reports on the players’ growing dissatisfaction with Arts Alive and Guinness Festival arrangements
WHAT looked like a bonanza for jazz fans in September — with an influx of international stars for both Arts Alive and the Guinness Festival — threatens, instead, to turn into boom-time for lawyers and mediators.
The Musicians’ Union of South Africa (Musa) has been besieged with complaints from local artists and venue owners about what they perceive as unfair treatment by both sets of festival organisers. The complaints – – plus several already lodged about the conduct of the Smirnoff Jazz Festival at Grahamstown — are reinforcing calls from grassroots cultural bodies for the speedy establishment of the arts councils envisaged by the Reconstruction and Development Programme to disburse funds and oversee such activities.
Performers have complained to Musa about the absence of a workshop programme at the Guinness Festival and about the lack of showcasing for home-based music and musicians. “We have gone past the time when simply including South Africans as support artists, or in a big band to pad out the numbers is satisfactory,” says Musa vice-president singer Helenne Ulster. “For example, we see no representation for home-based South African women performers.”
Musa is also concerned about Guinness’ apparent failure so far to lodge applications for work permits for its stars. The delay may be linked to a concern raised by local promoters: that many contracts for the festival have not yet been ratified, although the programme was announced as ostensibly confirmed at a launch three weeks ago. “We are seeking a meeting with Guinness to clarify these issues urgently,” said Ulster. “We’ll see where we go from there.”
“For me, the lack of workshops is almost criminal,” says a Musa member, pianist Denzil Weale. “Audiences and performers alike are robbed if there’s no interactive process to keep culture here vibrant and informed and to encourage visitors about the export- worthiness of our styles and talents.”
But while the Arts Alive Jazz Piano Series devotes over 60 percent of its time to workshopping (and while Arts Alive overall is employing 400-plus South African artists and fewer than 40 imports), that hasn’t stopped it, too, getting into hot water with the union. The dispute here focuses on a protracted wrangle about whether to site the concerts at Kippie’s or the Newtown Galleries, and about responsibility for an aborted parallel South African jazz piano series.
Julia Meintjies of Arts Alive asserts that the festival had always made it clear that it could offer no additional funding for a local series, and that the series was cancelled “due to a lack of funds on the part of Kippie’s”. Musa’s concerns about the lack of a local series then led to Kippie’s “unwilling(ness) to sign the drafted agreement” and thus to Arts Alive’s decision to relocate the series.
The Kippie’s/Musa version of events is very different. They claim they had a verbal promise of a local piano series from Arts Alive, that the contract drafted by the festival contained unacceptably punitive financial conditions for the club and that Arts Alive virtually vetoed the local series. Musa is handling the dispute as casework.
Weale feels poor communication may have fuelled the dispute: “Few people in South Africa — particularly from outfits like local authorities — have had sufficient training for getting into showbiz entrepreneurship. Despite good intentions, usually they combine naivete and arrogance in about equal proportions.”
He feels the attitude of Johannesburg pianists has hardened because the conceptual thinking behind the series has never been explained: “It looks as though Arts Alive doesn’t think we’re good enough.”
“Only when our unions can work with a democratically- selected Arts Council,” says Weale, “will be get to the point where equal conditions and chances come to South African artists. When an Arts Council gives out the funds, city councils can be pressured to reduce their activities to the point where they have funding both for local and visiting artists in an equitable way.”