Opportunities for Women in Music is focus of the Sync Up conference
2nd December 2019 · 0 Comments
By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer
On December 4, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the New Orleans Business Alliance will jointly host a workshop connecting New Orleans’ women to careers in the music industry.
The event, called Sync Up: Women Changing Music, features prominent women in the industry and spotlights their careers, as well as offers potential pathways for female-identifying New Orleanians to pursue their own careers in music outside of performing.
Loyola University and The Recording Academy also helped organize the workshop, which seeks to change statistics from a 2019 study indicating that only 2.3 percent of music industry producers are women, and that out of 871 producers, only four are women of color.
“The New Orleans Business Alliance decided to focus on this following a USC/Annenberg study illustrating the lack of women in the music industry,” said Bill Sabo, director of Food, Music, and Technology with the New Orleans Business Alliance. “We established a year-long partnership with Loyola and the Jazz and Heritage Foundation on several initiatives throughout 2020 to bring women into more careers in music.”
Associate Director of the School of Music Industry at Loyola Kate Duncan advised the Business Alliance on programming and will continue to work with the organization on a series of women-focused initiatives in the spring, including a week-long workshop for women in music to be held in March, in conjunction with the Jazz and Heritage Foundation.
USC’s study found that 21 percent of musical artists are women, 12 percent of songwriters are women, and that 40 percent of women stated that they face difficulty navigating the industry. Thirty-nine percent of women in the industry reported being objectified by men at work.
“I feel that the music industry is afraid of women, period,” said New Orleans musician Delish Da Goddess. “It’s harder to navigate the industry as a woman of color. I constantly play hide and go seek, or make moves in silence, because I know men are gonna cry about something they think they deserve when it’s actually male privilege stankin’ up the room. It’s like statistically, they’ve taken over everything, but when I give them zero attention, it makes them mad.”
Organizers of the Sync Up event want to move women into positions within the industry beyond performance.
“Equity in the music business is in a better place than it was ten years ago, but it’s certainly not where it needs to be,” said Kia Robinson, Programs, Marketing, and Communications Coordinator with the Jazz and Heritage Foundation. “We want to highlight pathways available to women not in front of the mic, but also in the C suite and engineering booth.”
To further that goal, the event will feature a panel of industry professionals to discuss how women can take advantage of career opportunities in music, including arts and entertainment attorney Donna Santiago, Fort Williams Artist Management founder Ami Spishock, Grammy award-winning producer and sound engineer Trina Shoemaker, and Missing Link Public Relations founder Nicole Robinson.
Robinson grew up in New Orleans and comes from a family of singers. After a stint working in research at a local radio station, she landed an internship with the regional representative for MCA records, and eventually served as regional manager of Record Promotions at Death Row Records and later regional manager of Marketing and Promotions at MCA/Universal. She founded her own company, and works with the NBA, Moet Hennessy, Trombone Shorty, and N.A.S.
“When I worked at Death Row, I was the only female on the staff, and I didn’t see women on the staffs of other artists when we went on tour,” she said. “There are women now, and we are getting our shot and taking chances to lead, but it’s still very male dominated. Back then, women didn’t run labels. Now, women are the face of labels at places like Motown and Atlantic.”
The Sync Up workshop will also feature a discussion with Michelle Thomas, a south Louisiana native who is now based in Los Angeles as the general manager of Prospective Records. Thomas has worked with the Black Eyed Peas, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Sheryl Crow and Enrique Iglesias, and currently manages all day-to-day operations at Prospective Records as well as leads marketing efforts.
Event organizers hope bringing these successful women together to advise and mentor creates opportunities for local women, especially women of color, to access wealth-generating businesses.
“We are working to ensure that the next Mahalia Jackson or Ledisi records great music mixed by women, on her own label, in her studio, right here in New Orleans,” said Quentin Messer Jr., president and CEO of the New Orleans Business Alliance.
Sync Up: Women in Music will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the George and Joyce Wein Jazz and Heritage Center (1225 N. Rampart Street). Admission is free, but attendees are asked to RSVP online at www.jazzandheritagefoundation.wufoo.com/forms/sync-up-women-changing-music-december-4-2019.
This article originally published in the December 2, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
