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Current mood:  angry
BC MUSICIANS MUST GET ANGRIER
by Dr.Joey Only
It was September 2008 when the Stephen Harper Federal Conservative Government cut $45 million from the Arts. Artists in Montreal organized demonstrations of more than 2500 people. But in BC there were no protests, no rage, no riots...nothing to defend ourselves against the most contemptuous government in Canuck history.
"You know, I think when ordinary, working people come home, turn on the
TV and see … a bunch of people at a rich gala all subsidized by the
taxpayers, claiming their subsidies aren't high enough when they know
the subsidies have actually gone up, I'm not sure that's something that
resonates with ordinary people," Prime Minister Stephen Harper using his forked and lyig tongue to defend $45 million in cuts to the arts.
Funny as it is, when I turn on the TV and see publicly funded gala's it isn't usually artsists that are at the table...it's most often Harper himself and his Tory cronies dining on $250 bottles of wine. Harper's contempt for 'socialists' and 'seperatists' and whoever isn't compliant in his failing neo-conservative revolution is impossible to ignore. His contempt for artists is worrysome. Even Hitler supported the arts!!
You are under attack financially and spiritually from the right wing! Your enemies are gathering power and working
against you, yet your art is devoid of politics or
social commentary. You are being hacked and slashed to death yet you paint bowls of Okanagan fruit and sing songs about hippy-birds. You live amongst the working class yet have nothing to say in its
defence. You are a working artist on the brink of extinction with no cleverly crafted words of judgment or anger...some of you believe that you would
be practicing negativity if you delved into politics...or even that people wouldn't like your art.
In offering no battle BC artists proved themselves to be an easy target and a weak foe. Perhaps that was on Premier Gordon Campbell's mind when he enacted a $77 million cut to arts this past August. It was truly a cut aimed at making the Olympic budget work. There were some protests, but there is no movement!
It was a cut that they rammed through in the most mean-spirited, distasteful and disrespectful of ways, it was slashed right from under the feet of organizations that BC artists rely on in remote communities. For example Island Mountain Arts in Wells BC, the organization responsible for the ARTSWELLS FESTIVAL, had $22,000 cut from its operating budget. That cut was retroactive to this years budget, so in other words somebody at IMA has just found their salary is not in the bank! It's not just a cut, it's a complete slap in their face from a provincial government who promised not to cut the arts during the last election.
I may be the only artist to never have accepted a government grant of any sort. I have seen that when you work with the system it's only a matter of time before they screw you over. I've never applied to Factor for a recording grant, I've never accepted money from a record label. I own my words and use them to say what I want.
What I want to say is this: you as artists have a responsibility to speak on behalf of the people. Call that politics or call that community, I don't care what you call it....do it!
Where is your anti-Olympic rage? Where is your self defence? Where is your passion? This a-political province of artists has allowed itself to see its grants, budgets and resources stolen and given to the Olympic elite. As Geoff Berner's newest anti-Olympic song sez, 'the dead dead artists were worth it.'
10:22 PM
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