From a Global Challenge to Local Realities

On July 28, 2020, the Canadian cultural organization "Small World Music” presented an online panel session that brought together more than 20 different stakeholders from Africa’s music industry, as part of its "Global Toronto” conference. The panel was designed as an opportunity to share experiences and thoughts, as well as first ideas and solutions for the African music sector facing the ongoing world crisis. 

 

As for "Global Toronto”, it was initially meant as a music showcase taking place in Canada in May 2020, but had to be completely digitally re-designed, bringing together more than 800 delegates from 73 countries. The event lasted a full week, with sessions either connecting professionals from a specific world area in what were referred to as "regional network spaces” (i.e. Africa, North America, Asia, etc.), spotlighting an artist’s work, or gathering specialists around a highly specific subject like digital streaming, issues of promotion, distribution and international marketing, or environmental impact of the music industry, just to name a few. In other words, Global Toronto became a sort of "virtual think tank” that allowed a diverse range of voices to be heard and experiences to be shared.

 

The African Music Industry panel session was particularly enlightening by showing how Covid-19 deepens disparities and inequalities in the cultural sector on a world scale. In fact, this opportunity for experience-sharing gave deeper insights into the reality of the field than do many surveys that have been recently conducted (e.g. Music in Africa Foundation, 2020, The Financial Impact of Covid-19 on the African Music Sector), since the speakers’ testimonials covered "more invisible [issues] which will potentially have more long-term impacts” (Comunian & England 2020, p. 113) for cultural workers and the sector in general.

 

 

The vitality of the cultural and creative sector in Africa has been proven more than once in recent years (see for instance 2016, Cultural and Creative Industries in Africa). Solely with the music field, the continent has seen a multiplication of festivals as well as conferences and showcases, meant to offer networking for the whole spectrum of music professionals, to promote African projects and talents for trade, export, and touring opportunities, but also to provide artists from abroad with the opportunity to enter the African market. As such, these events are at the crossroads of transnational networks, relating in various ways to other regions of the world. 

 

In fact, understanding the African music industry implies constant changes of scale, from national structures to regional clusters, from pan-African organizations to transnational networks. Africa is a territory encasing complex dynamics with, for instance, policies regarding the cultural economy mainly undertaken at a national level - despite borders not reflecting practices and trends, as explains researcher Jenny F. Mbaye (2015). The continent also embraces important local, if not sublocal characteristics which prevent thinking of it as a unified reality. Additionally, there is a considerable African diaspora that keeps nurturing the continent’s musical life by constantly commuting between countries (Kiwan & Meinhof 2011). Undoubtedly, there are still many misconceptions to overcome and things to discover for cultural workers who have not yet had the opportunity to visit and/or collaborate with Africa. In this regard, the "‘Post-Pandemic’ African Music Industry” Panel Session certainly did raise awareness for many international attendees of the "Global Toronto” conference.

 

 

Led by Herman Kabubi (who I must sincerely thank for his time and the fruitful conversation we had parallel to Global Toronto), an East African arts market and festival programmer, the panel session was organized with the intention of mirroring the size and diversity of the continent. To do so, Kabubi managed to bring together 26 delegates from 20 countries to share their experiences, challenges, but also solutions regarding the pandemic, in order to learn from each other (here you can find the video presentations of 20 panelists. Most of them wore multiple professional hats as is often seen in the arts sector; simultaneously being artists, arts managers and/or events’ organizers, they represented festivals, music conferences and showcases, publishing agencies, foundations, and more. Though there was a regrettable absence of both female and West African representation among these participants, the spectrum of experiences assembled virtually was nonetheless greater than what would probably ever be possible in person. 

 

The interventions revealed an array of current issues for the music sector and its professionals, some overlapping across African countries, others varying from one region to the other. While most of these challenges were not fundamentally new for any music professional in these times of crisis, there were still many local and regional specifics that showed that the long-term repercussions to expect from the pandemic will definitely vary depending on the territory.

 

 

Since March, the pandemic has hit differently depending on the region, putting certain populations in a very strict lockdown with curfews, like in South Africa. Others kept a more normal pace of life like in Tanzania, where the president declared the country "coronavirus-free” in June and live events were resumed, as explained by Yusuf Mahmood, festival director of Sauti za Busara Festival in Zanzibar. Nevertheless, the physical distancing impacts the music sector at its very heart. For certain panelists, imposing distancing during their event was simply inconceivable because it was too antagonistic to the way their audiences usually experienced music, i.e. by dancing and celebrating all together. 

 

Beyond the performances themselves, the limitations in face-to-face gatherings also strongly affect the way the whole chain of music professionals operate, as meeting in person is at the core of most working relationships in the sector. If this is to some degree true anywhere, it takes on a particularly strong meaning in Africa, where projects usually fully take shape after human encounters and sufficient time to build a bond of trust. In that respect, African music conferences that usually have a more human scale than their European or North American counterparts are first and foremost meant to bring stakeholders together and give them the opportunity to really get to know each other. The current impairment of this type of networking is a major concern, as these kinds of professional encounters give rise to new projects that allow the cultural sector to be so dynamic.

 

Many people and organizations have addressed the situation by converting to online events. However, this relies on the premise of having access to the internet and technologies, which varies greatly according to social, political, and economic conditions. In Africa, the cost of data is often a major limiting factor, as speakers from Malawi and South Africa reminded us during the panel session. The issue takes on considerable proportions in countries where authorities bluntly decide to cut Internet access, like in Ethiopia that was cited as an example. In cases where poor access to the internet affects the audience of an event, like the Amani Festival in Congo represented by Vianney Bisimwa, going digital doesn’t appear to be the panacea. 

 

In brief, before finding solutions to monetize online content like many cultural professionals are now debating, there are more practical issues to solve in certain regions. The issue of the "digital divide” takes many different shapes and is, without a doubt, a major source of growing inequalities between audiences as well as between cultural workers and organizations worldwide.

 

 

One of the most obvious consequences of the pandemic is the worsening of already precarious conditions for cultural workers. These challenges take on exponential proportions in places where cultural job market policies have yet to be developed, including most African countries and regions. Indeed, many cultural professionals struggle to have their rights recognized on that continent, as they fall into the category of "informal workers”, to quote the panelist Derrick Debru from Nyege Nyege festival in Uganda. 

 

If informality is a ubiquitous phenomenon impacting the numerous freelance workers in cultural sectors from North to South, it also characterizes many dimensions of the music industry in Africa. For example, informality pertains to networking practices, with personal contacts such as family and friends frequently intermingling with professional ones (Mbaye 2013). As a few speakers put it during the panel, certain events rely on the pooling of resources from acquaintances who provide accommodation, technical supplies, and all sorts of human assistance that counteract the lack of official recognition and resulting support. If such solidarity is not necessarily going to die out with the pandemic, the fact remains that the pool of resources will most probably decrease significantly, starting by many professionals forced to quit the music sector due to precarious conditions becoming too blatant.

 

Although Covid-19 did put a wide range of individuals in a fragile situation, those who work in sectors like arts and music that particularly struggle to get rightly acknowledged in Africa find themselves quite helpless, with no mechanisms of social security. As such, the pandemic acts as a reminder of the long battle to keep fighting for the recognition of artists and cultural workers as contributors to the economic growth and social advancement of African societies (along these lines, see the webinar "Status of the Artist in the Africa Region” broadcasted by UNESCO).

 

 

Lastly, one factor that currently affects artists around the world, namely the mobility constraints, did not wait for this crisis to strike in Africa. As a matter of fact, it is likely one of the main impediments to the development of artists’ careers on that continent, as it is not only a question of traveling to other parts of the world, but first and foremost a question of movement within Africa. Mentioned by speakers but not addressed in-depth during the panel session, this issue nevertheless seems inescapable in this reflection on inequalities deriving from the pandemic. 

 

Almost ten years ago, the international not-for-profit organization Art Moves Africa launched a research program that has since published studies on mobility and touring issues. One of the striking findings is that African cultural professionals and artists often have a greater reflex and tendency to go to Europe than to other countries or regions in Africa. This can be due to the scarcity and very high costs of intra-continental travels - often more expensive than flights to Europe -, the difficulties of obtaining visas even to enter nearby countries, the bigger prestige that comes with careers on other continents, the misconceptions or simply lack of information about the African arts sector, just to name a few. 

 

Thus, even if some speakers at the African Music Industry panel session expressed their intention to redesign their upcoming in-person festival or conference edition with a more local and regional lineup, such a scenario might still involve obstacles. Put differently, in a world context where short-distance movements might become a constrained standard for a while, the mobility issue is likely to remain all the more critical in Africa.

 

 

Although most of the challenges that were discussed are to some extent global, they nevertheless manifest themselves in local ways that must be considered fully. As an expanding body of arts and cultural management literature shows, there is no "one size fits all” manner of conceiving the cultural sector, but many values, logics, perspectives, and needs to take into consideration. This also applies to the current critical situation, as problems emerge in different ways, and the resources to overcome them are highly variable. 

 

Foreseeing the "‘Post-Pandemic’ African Music Industry,” as the title of this panel session invited us to do, remains difficult as we are still in the midst of the crisis, with no clear idea of its effective end. Yet, this 3-hour experience-sharing from a diverse range of African music professionals stressed many aspects that we must monitor carefully as they might weaken this industry dramatically in the upcoming months and years. 

 

In this regard, there has been a profusion of virtual panel sessions and webinars these past months, with the pandemic acting like a catalyst for exchanges between cultural stakeholders. The African continent is no exception, having for example hosted more than 30 debates of the movement ResiliArt initiated by UNESCO in April. All sorts of initiatives of this kind are emerging, some with a global perspective, others with a more local or regional focus. The latter might feel more natural in these times when we are forced to work and function on a smaller geographical scale. That said, it is important to stay connected to the realities of other countries, if not continents, and learn about their cultural workers’ experiences like the "Global Toronto” conference proposed. By doing so, we can acknowledge the multiplicity of incidences and responses to the current crisis, and consequently start to imagine a "post-pandemic” future in a realistic, but also more inclusive way.