Positive discrimination/affirmative action etc in music

[IdleRich]

This is an interesting one to me. I mention it cos of two things recently.

In summer we are going on holiday with my parents to Orkney (for non-Brits that's a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland on the way to Shetlands and ultimately Norway) and we decided to travel through Scotland and meet them there, maybe do some DJ-ing on the way. So someone put us in touch with a club in Edinburgh àand we had a chat, sent some mixes etc in the end they said "ok, cool, we got a night and we like the sound, but we only book women so Liza can play but you can't". Which is a bit annoying, not the end of the world cos I don't have to drag my records round Scotland... but it doesn't feel quite right somehow.

Then, we got a friend, fairly well established producer, dj etc he's just been dropped by his agency and they said that a big part of it is cos clubs wanna book women and as an older, white guy they don't wanna book him.

In fact there is another, third, thing, when we were booking Lena Willikens to play Lisbon, we were talking to one club and we happened to mention her boyfriend might be coming over, they went "Boyfriend? I thought she was gay?" and they went cold on the booking. Those guys are the most militant gays in Lisbon, they really don't like to book or even associate with people who are straight.... oh, although they do make an exception for.... themselves, something I always find rather funny is that these guys who are the most aggressively anti-cis in terms of their attitudes and policies are a happily married straight couple.

So again... I dunno, I do agree straight white men have had it too easy too long and I'm certainly down with doing something about that. I'd definitely be thinking that if there was a slot and it was an equal decision in every other way between a man and a woman then sure go for the woman. But I think if it's totally quota driven it's a problem, if I go out to a club I wanna hear music picked cos it's good, not cos the dj ticked a box. I mean if the music is good AND they tick the box all fine...

I dunno what I'm saying here overall, I guess I'm not saying anything really, just wondering out loud about this situation. I suppose I have a feeling that something that is well intentioned is causing some collateral damage along with the positives it brings. Although I recognize it would be difficult to apply it precisely. No reai idea for a solution or anything.

 

[shakahislop]

i never know exactly what to think about this. it's the same in my job, where the emphasis now is on selecting people for positions based on demographic characteristics. and i am not one of the favoured (actually i'm specifically the group they don't want, like you), and it is annoying and does impact quite important parts of my livelihood and enjoyment of my work and so on.

it's probably a good thing overall, on balance, with some deserving people getting caught in the crossfire. it hardly ever brings class into account, which is a big component of access to opportunities. that would be pretty hard to do practically though. and like anything about distribution of opportunity, someone is going to lose out and it's not particularly fair. there's also an issue of trying to work out when it moves from a correction to an overcorrection.

 

[maxi]

I think you're right to feel that it's not quite right. One of the reasons it feels off is because it's often motivated by PR purposes to help the promoters' image rather than help anyone else. You can see this because it's always based on things that are immediately visible to the eye e.g. skin colour and sex. Whereas if it was a white person who came from a underprivileged lower class background with no media connections, that wouldn't count because they would just look like any white guy to the punters. and therefore wouldn't help the promoters' image.

It can also be insulting to the DJs they do select if they are choosing them based on their ethnicity/sex/sexuality and just exploiting that to make themselves seem more virtuous or cooler by association. They're not treating people as individuals but as representatives of a group - isn't that how we define things like racism in the first place?

if it's ostensibly driven by an attempt at redressing the balance, but then most of a particular scene now privileges the other groups, won't that just eventually lead to a situation where by their own logic it would then be seen as important within that social scene to privilege the now held-back but originally privileged group. and then see-saw back again and just keep constant handovers of power going. what's the point in that.

I think it shows a basic lack of understanding over why racism/discrimination is wrong in principle and it's a great way of sowing discord and turning people against each other.

 

[shakahislop]

it is part obviously of a much bigger cultural inflection point, which is the foregrounding of identity groups etc. whether or not that way of looking at the world is going to last or not in europe is hard to say. can't say nothing about portugal but in the uk that feels like a recent import from a longstanding US tradition, from my vantage point.

 

[IdleRich]

From my point of view, as a dj, I'm never gonna be a big star, it's not my ultimate livelihood or anything, and I guess in fact, cos of the way Liza and I work, if there's something where I'm blocked from playing because of my gender, then likely Liza can do it instead. So what I'm saying is that, professionally, this is not a big deal for ME - although I do reserve the right to totally withdraw that comment and change my viewpoint by one hundred and eighty degrees if somehow I get prevented from doing something I really really want to do.

But, where it might actually affect me more, is as a punter. I like music, I like clubbing, I like dancing etc etc and honestly it doesn't matter to me in the least who that tiny figure I can barely see in that box at the front is - as long qaas they play great music. And I really want to dance to the best music I can, I want it selected entirely on the basis of how good it is.

 

[wild greens]

People are bored of looking at ageing white men all the time & who can blame them

 

[Mr. Tea]

People are bored of looking at ageing white men all the time & who can blame them

I feel this could easily be remedied through wearing an exciting hat.

 

[Leo]

I feel this could easily be remedied through wearing an exciting hat.

Or by being a male lesbian.

 

[version]

Sometimes this stuff seems like it's inadvertently laying the groundwork for the kind of segregation elements of the right favour, but if you're a woman or queer or a minority then you've probably had negative experiences with the people being excluded so it's understandable you'd want your own spot where you don't have to deal with men or white or straight people.

 

[luka]

this happened to barty. he wrote an article about dancehall and resident advisor wanted to print it then thirdform told them he was a white man and they then turned round and said we're not putting this out we dont want any whites anymore. well, other than ourselves lol.

 

[version]

... something I always find rather funny is that these guys who are the most aggressively anti-cis in terms of their attitudes and policies are a happily married straight couple.

we dont want any whites anymore. well, other than ourselves lol.

Classic. Reminds me of the white people who are always making a big performance of hating "white people". Another I've seen mentioned is Asian-American women who are very vocal about not liking white people, but only ever seem to date white men.

 

[version]

I think you're right to feel that it's not quite right. One of the reasons it feels off is because it's often motivated by PR purposes to help the promoters' image rather than help anyone else.

Yeah, one effect for me is a contribution to the overall sense of fakeness that seems to permeate everything nowadays. It's not that things are engineered and manufactured, but that they're so nakedly engineered and manufactured.

The old talking points of "authenticity" and things always having been engineered inevitably raise their heads, but I think people understand what I mean. You can feel it when you look at the news or just the way a story moves through social media. It's like someone's burned the flesh off the Terminator. There's no disguise. You're just looking at the machine now.

 

[wild greens]

There is a reason why clubs book loads of women now and its because they sell more tickets than male-only line ups

 

[IdleRich]

People are bored of looking at ageing white men all the time & who can blame them

True... but half the time you can't even see who is playing. It's just a figure partly hidden from view putting records on. Once upon a time it was supposed to be kinda faceless, no star, just music playing and the crowd - which was in fact the star - dancing together. Now I get that a lot of the time that's changed and the dj is elevated putting on a performance with the crowd all facing them. That's not my favourite kind of party, but I can't pretend that it's not what happens a lot of the time.

 

[version]

There is a reason why clubs book loads of women now and its because they sell more tickets than male-only line ups

That's partly a product of the things being discussed in the thread though, isn't it? Otherwise they wouldn't have been necessary in the first place. The culture and market's been shifted and the industry's become more accessible to women. This hasn't happened simply because women inherently sell more tickets.

 

[version]

True... but half the time you can't even see who is playing. It's just a figure partly hidden from view putting records on. Once upon a time it was supposed to be kinda faceless, no star, just music playing and the crowd - which was in fact the star - dancing together. Now I get that a lot of the time that's changed and the dj is elevated putting on a performance with the crowd all facing them. That's not my favourite kind of party, but I can't pretend that it's not what happens a lot of the time.

You might be able to wangle a Burial sort of thing where you cultivate some sort of mystique and that becomes the brand, but most people are forced to market their image. It's just the way it works. You can't make it any other way. You have to have a personal brand, something people can recognise.

 

[IdleRich]

I think you're right to feel that it's not quite right. One of the reasons it feels off is because it's often motivated by PR purposes to help the promoters' image rather than help anyone else.

I gotta admit I do have a problem with these guys I'm talking about; the language they use, the way they talk about straight, cis-gender, white people... genuinely unpleasant, inflammatory language, I could not believe it when I found out that they themselves were white, cis, straight etc I mean I literally laughed out loud. But it's just really really strange, I don't understand the thinking here at all.

Oh another one is a night at Damas. These guys I know from Porto were booked to do a night there. They were asked to play live and curate the night so they played and they booked our friend Borja (from that band whose name is a weird blind spot for me, @Leo knows who I mean) to DJ as warm up, which he did, fair enough, but then at the last minute Damas (which means two things, it can mean checkers like draughts, but it also means dames or queens or similar, cos it's owned by these two sisters) insisted that they add this female DJ to the bill, so it was a weird night with Borja warning up playing music appropriate to his mates' band, then the band played a kinda live electro set - and then this random girl came on and played this closing set that had nothing to do with the rest of the night, totally inappropriate music that didn't fit at all and which was of no interest at all to the people who had come to see the advertised night with this band playing and curating it.

Things like that I don't understand cos, let's say @wild greens is right - which I reckon he might well be - about mixed or female line-ups selling better, why would you stick someone in like that without telling anyone? It can't add sales, all it did was mess up the night. I can't even imagine the DJ enjoyed it cos who wants to play to a load of people that don't like your stuff?

 

[version]

Things like that I don't understand cos, let's say @wild greens is right - which I reckon he might well be - about mixed or female line-ups selling better, why would you stick someone in like that without telling anyone? It can't add sales, all it did was mess up the night. I can't even imagine the DJ enjoyed it cos who wants to play to a load of people that don't like your stuff?

That just sounds like incompetent management to me. I dunno that you can infer anything from it beyond the people running that night making a mess of it.

 

[IdleRich]

Noone can argue with a club booking a line-up that is gonna be more popular. But I definitely feel that there are some decisions that are anti-commercial; are we really to believe that Lena became a worse commercial proposition in that second when they realized she wasn't gay?

 

[wild greens]

This hasn't happened simply because women inherently sell more tickets.

I personally think it happened in London as a conscious effort to move away from the male-dominated 2000s and early 2010s but more importantly that it has continued to occur simply because women inherently sell more tickets. They also attract more women into clubs in general, which is of upmost importance to any promoter who wishes to have any longevity really

@IdleRich i don't think i actually said that but was it not a gay night? I would assume that if you are gay promoters you are more comfortable booking people who are your own sexuality and they would also be more marketable to a gay punter

I am just guessing here