A number of post-Brexit factors and regulations have led to a great deal of money being lost from independent artists and labels who have struggled in getting records and other products to their fans on the continent - NME writes in a great long read about politics messing up music.
"Now what do we do to find a way to really resist the stuff that is destroying the planet, that’s causing working people’s lives to be worse than their parents’ were? Poverty and hunger kill more people than anything else on the planet and they are human-made problems. Those are the things that we need to be digging into, rather than being sidetracked by this carnival barker bullshit" - Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello said in a Guardian interview. When asked about the events of 6 January he said "we came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in this country", adding "interestingly, one of my dreams has always been to storm the Capitol, but not with a bunch of all-white, rightwing terrorists, you know? The ugliest part about it is how they have co-opted the idea of standing against the Man, at least in the US".
Californian musician Lanny Cordola six years ago started The Miraculous Love Kids, a music school for girls in Kabul, Afghanistan. Two months ago it just perished. Besides this precious and once unimaginable school being shuttered, these girls’ lives are in peril. For now, laying low in their homes, having to wear a Hijab to go out is something that they have not grown up with - Spin points out and looks behind the hijab.
Teodoro “Teodorin” Nguema Obiang Mangue was born with power: since the late 1970s, his father had run the small central African country of Equatorial Guinea as a despot overseeing a murderous regime buoyed and financed by unending flows of crude oil. As a result, Teodorin enjoyed flaunting his wealth however he could. Some of his wealth Mangue spent building the world’s largest Michael Jackson memorabilia collection. Rolling Stone brings an excerpt from Casey Michel’s book, 'American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History' which describes how, among other themes, federal agents used Mangue's MJ fetish to track down millions in ill-gotten gains. The book is out November.
Music Business Worldwide does a great job analysing the UK government's inaction about the payment for music streaming issues. In July, the UK parliament's Department of Culture, Media & Sport Committee published a report which called for government action on a number of music industry issues regarding streaming payouts. The standout recommendation from the DCMS report was that the majors’ dominance of the UK record industry be referred to the UK’s competition watchdog – the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA). The UK government response was less than lame - it has declined to announce any legislative measures, and has also not officially referred the issue of major label-dominance to the CMA.
"The Taliban's anti-democracy regime, which regained control over the country last month, after the U.S. ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan and began pulling troops from the region, has already had a devastating impact on local music. Over two decades of democracy, Afghan musicians had slowly developed bands and orchestras, from a classical and traditional school called the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) to the reality-TV talent show Afghan Star to concert festivals and DIY scenes for hip-hop, hard rock, black metal and other genres. But under the Taliban, all that is gone now" - Billboard wrote in its piece about the troubled country.
Shortly after the military coup in Myanmar at the beginning of the year, four musicians recorded a protest song 'Headshot' about security forces shooting to kill. Within hours of releasing the song, the rockers scattered. Three of them were later placed on a wanted list for sedition, their names and photos shown on the military-run TV channel. By June, they’d be irreparably separated. Kyar Pauk has since fled the country. Han Nay Tar, lead singer of Eternal Gosh, an alternative and pop rock band established in 2013, has gone deep into hiding and couldn’t be reached. Novem Htoo, among the country’s most famous metal vocalists, has sought shelter with an ethnic armed organization. Raymond, lead singer of the band The Idiots and among Myanmar’s most influential rock musicians of this generation, had been staying in the jungle with Novem Htoo, but on June 23rd, the 32-year-old, who had long suffered from gastrointestinal problems, was found dead. Rolling Stone tells the story in full.
China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism has banned any music that breaches a fresh set of government rules from being played within the country’s near-50,000 karaoke venues. Among other rules, tracks deemed “contrary to public morality”, and/or content “that which insults or defames others” will be banned from October 1. The new set of rules are most likely to target domestic Chinese music and, in particular, Chinese hip-hop.
“I cannot imagine a society without music, it would be a dead society, I don’t know how it could survive. You can’t take music out of the hearts of people” - Ahmad Sarmast, the founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, told the Guardian after the Taliban overtook Afghanistan. The Institute also encompasses the Afghan Women’s Orchestra, which has become a “symbol of the emancipation of women”.
The U.K.’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has announced that it has negotiated short-term tours for UK musicians and performers without visas and work permits in 19 EU member states, NME reports. These countries are: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. Trade bodies and unions representing British musicians say this changes nothing, insist "short term" is undefined, adding that there is still the issue of equipment transportation, Guardian reports. Formal approaches via officials and DCMS Ministers have been made to Spain, Croatia, Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Malta and Cyprus. The U.K. allows touring performers and support staff to come to the U.K. for up to three months without a visa.
