Music & The Media
Sean Laffey, Editor of Irish Music Magazine offers some thoughts on the best ways to get the media to work for you.
In early August I was the guest of a Cairdens Cealtech at the huge Interceltic Festival in Lorient in France, and I choose the word huge with care. The festival had a large audience, over 450,000 with an ambitious programme of events, massive venues (including a football stadium) and moreover it had big ideas. The media were an internal part of the festival concept, daily press conferences allowed journalists access to big names, an interpretation service made sure that language was no barrier, photography was accepted, welcomed and encouraged.
My first gig when I returned from France was at the NCH, "no photography during the performance" was the rule, and it was enforced. So the newspapers didn't run the pictures of Donal Lunny on the opening night, music lost an opportunity to become relevant and in the long term view the collective archive of Dublin 2000 was so much poorer. Two contrasting cultural stances, the Breton's eager to disseminate their message, nearer home the subtext was "we want to control the output, nothing is allowed unless it is filtered by our press office". Or more simply, one organisation sees the media as friend, the other views us with a certain degree of circumspection.
The English speaking world is still reverbing to the echoes of the 1960's. The decade dubbed as "swinging" has left and indelible mark on the latter half of the 20th century and we are still suffering what Daniel Patrick Moynihan described as "the heresies of liberalism", when he addressed students at Harvard in the turbulent summer of 1968. The sixties were the time that rock and roll began to matter, it went beyond entertainment, songs could be icons for generations, whether it was the radical student movement who adopted the spiritual We Will Overcome and re-worked it as We Shall Overcome or the lush youth of California who identified with the Beach Boys, popular music was becoming fragmented, and ultimately divorced from its traditional home base in Tin Pan Ally and the Broadway stage. The 60's was the time when local music was hip not hick. What were those "heresies of liberalism"? Firstly, the questioning of long held moral values, which would result in a decline in respect for authority and secondly a contant reappraisal of traditional beliefs. The media was central to this collapse in the established house of cards. Changes in technology, notably the Nikon SLR camera, gave print media in particular, a new cinematic edge, symbolism and iconography could replace inches of dense comment. The new image of hungry TV stations began to intrude into our lives (RTE TV dates for the 60's). Along with the technology came the new power, from being organs of analysis and reportage in the accepted actualite sense of the word, the media began to yield power. Today advocacy has become just as important as accuracy, one huge reason to be wary of the media.
Forty years on there is an expectation that the media can still make a difference, getting a song played on national radio could lead to superstar status, not getting noticed results in being confined to the backwaters of sloppily photocopied fanzines and a life of pseudo-cult obscurity. Are there any tricks, is there a philosopher's stone that will light the path to every publication in the universe? Probably not, but, there are a few simply guide lines for getting noticed. Firstly your products have to be good enough, I'm not going to elaborate on that subjective statement, other than to say the real tests of quality are do people want to own it and can it be remembered. The public is the final arbiter. Music editors and researches are as much the public as the man or woman on the Glasnevin Bus, so make sure you send your demos and final CDs to the folks on the top. Be professional, you'd be amazed at the numbers of great sounding CDs I receive that are accompanied by a scrawled illegible note. If you don't appear to be professional in everything you do, don't be surprised if the media dismiss you as being a well meaning amateur.
Understand too that the media, whatever form it takes, have multiple personalities and responsibilities. In our own care at Irish Music we have to balance the context of each issue so that it, informs, entertains, enlightens, comments, analysis, predicts and acts as an advocate for the music, the music industry and its diverse audience. There's an old very true slogan in advertising, "winners maximise reach and frequency". Getting your name and your music heard is all about understanding the importance of reach and frequency. A series of ads tells the public that you have product for sale, informing diary editors of tours and gigs helps build up a fan base who are looking forward to your performance. Inviting reviewers to live shows ensures the particular magic of your performances can be captured for all time. Photographers and picture editiors should be given at least some access to your live work. Finally you may be lucky enough to interest a features editor, who's job it is to commission a story or an interview. This may be the height of media success, but it is also the one fraction of the genre where the old rules always apply; be prepared to tell your story, a feature without a narrative is like a line in the traditional song - "winter out of season".
The media can be your friend, the more success it brings you, the more intrusive it will become. Sometimes, like a good friend it might also tell you where you have lost the run of yourself. If fame is the spur, be prepared for the sting.
For more information on Sean Laffey visit www.iol.ie/~didly-didly
