4/4/2023 0 Comments Black out tuesday![]() ![]() Reports like UK Music’s recent diversity breakdown will become more commonplace as many in the industry view better, more comprehensive data as the best way to hold companies to account. From a national perspective it looks good but from a city perspective, we’ve got a lot of work to do.” But actually in London, it’s nearly 40%, and most of the industry works in London. “If you take a UK perspective, it feels quite good, because you can say: well, there’s only 14% BAME across the UK. For Ammo Talwar, chair of the UK Music diversity taskforce, the statistics are damning. UK Music recently released new data about the ethnic backgrounds of people working in the music industry – it shows the number of Black people in the industry falls from 12.6% at entry level, to 6.4% at senior level. There is still a long way to go, however, particularly in retaining Black talent both on stage and behind the scenes. We’ve all earned it because we’ve been working at it.” “I don’t want people to feel like, ‘you’re lucky to be here’. “We’ve been navigating this industry for so long,” says Love. Nova Twins are one of 20 bands supported by Power Up this year and feel the initiative is more than deserved for historically marginalised Black artists in the UK. The CEO of Beggars Group swam the Channel to raise funds for Power Up.” “YouTube Music came on board straight away, they were like, ‘we get it, we want to get involved’. Power Up co-founder Ben Wynter says the reaction from companies has been positive so far. Those steps forward come in the form of new initiatives such as the PRS Foundation’s Power Up – in giving grants, mentoring and other forms of support, it aims to support talented Black artists and executives in reaching the next stage of their careers. “The good news is that the mass Black Lives Matter movement and the acknowledgement of racism and injustice have been giant steps forward and that is great progress,” she says, “but 2021 now needs to be a year of action, with tangible results.” “They were genuinely concerned and things in place to make that change,” says guitarist Amy Love.Īlthough it is too early to say which companies are leading the way, for Kanya King, founder of the Mobo awards, that the movement exists at all is a positive. UK alt-rock band Nova Twins noticed that many companies wanted to start conversations with Black artists after recognising the lack of diversity on their teams. One of the most significant changes seems to be the fact that the topic of race is now being broached by all sides of the music industry. The reasons why this moment has clicked are hard to pinpoint, but for Rudder it was the simple realisation that “enough is enough … we are tired of smiling through.” She says the protests meant “we were forced to talk about things that we’ve probably never really spoken to other people about.” Photograph: 2020 Billboard Women In Music/Getty Images for Billboard “I don’t feel like some were, but they had to act on it, because once you put that black square up, people were like: ‘OK, so what are you doing about this, then?’”īrianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas accept the executives of the year award at the Billboard Women In Music 2020 event in December. “Were they completely sincere in it? I really can’t tell you,” says music consultant Melanie Rudder of Three Thirty Music, who has worked in the industry for more than 20 years. The outpouring of support for racial justice was welcomed, but a year on, many in the industry are piling on the pressure to ensure the companies that shared black squares of solidarity fulfil their promises to change. On what became colloquially known as Blackout Tuesday, labels shared messages of support and suspended business, as did artists including the Rolling Stones, Rihanna, and Yoko Ono. “Our mission is to hold the industry at large, including major corporations + their partners who benefit from the efforts, struggles and successes of Black people accountable,” wrote the women under the hashtag #theshowmustbepaused, which was shared more than 700,000 times. I t is a year since two Black female music executives, Jamila Thomas of Atlantic Records and Brianna Agyemang of Platoon, called for the music industry to shut down for the day in protest following the killing of George Floyd. ![]()
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