The Rationale
Music is both an important heritage industry in Memphis, as well as a potential industry to be reconceived as an inroad to the creative economy.
In terms of infrastructure and economic impact, we are currently a long way from the halcyon days of the late 1960s, when music was one of the city’s largest industries, and Memphis was among the world’s top recording centers. 1 For a variety of reasons, the magnitude of any local music industry is difficult to pin down. The categories used in the standard industrial classification system don’t make it easy to single-out employment that is specifically music-related. And the data don’t account well for self-employed musicians, or those for whom music is a second job. But by most reasoned measures, Memphis no longer stands out as a music industry Mecca. Our concentration of music-related employment is not significantly different than most similar sized cities. 2
Why a Music-Centered Approach?
As we crafted our Memphis approach to arts-based neighborhood revitalization, these realization gave us pause – but ultimately we remain convinced that a focus on music makes sense as the centerpiece of our approach.
Music is the city’s most recognizable indigenous outlet for creativity. And music is more than an industry – it is culture – and its impact or worth cannot be defined by traditional measure of industry magnitude. And in Memphis, the music community has always been more important to the city than the music business.
Our resolve is strengthened by the way in which people consistently recognize music as a unique and significant asset. That recognition exists among:
- people who live in Memphis,
- people outside of Memphis,
- and the people who make and influence economic development policy in Memphis
We believe that this can serve as foundation for change.
The Pride of Memphians
In September of 2007, the Commercial Appeal asked readers: What is Memphis’ single greatest asset? The overwhelming majority of the printed responses focused on music and/or art.
Beyond the heritage, a vibrant current music scene is one of the most important cultural amenities necessary to foster a creative workforce. Like a magnet, a city’s music scene can either attract or repel the young, creative professionals looking for more out of life than just a 9 to 5 job. Music provides a common bond around which people from different walks of life can converge.
Outsiders and Image
Memphis’ reputation as the “Home of the blues” and the “birthplace of rock and roll” remains intact and as strong as ever. The outside interest that derives from this recognition manifests itself in significant music-related tourism, as noted in a study of the economic impact of the music industry in Memphis and Shelby County conducted by the Sparks Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Memphis:
Clearly, music-related tourism and its close ties to the musical heritage of Memphis has a large positive impact on the image and economy of Memphis.
And projects like Craig Brewer’s $5 Cover are helping to spread the word about the tremendous diversity of our current local music scene.
This longstanding national recognition and reputation provide a foundation on which to build – a built-in springboard that other cities who have found success with arts-based revitalization projects have not had. We believe that we can build on this recognition to shape our image, and expand how we promote Memphis to appeal to the creative workforce essential for success in the 21st century knowledge economy.
Economic Development Priority
Business, civic, and government leaders who make and influence economic development policy in Memphis have recognized the music industry and the music scene as critical to the city’s future economic success.
A report of the Memphis Talent Magnet Project, prepared for local city and county governments and the Greater Memphis Chamber, urges the following:
Spread the word that Memphis music didn’t pass away with Elvis. Position Memphis’ musical history as the foundation for today’s hot live music scene.
Memphis Tomorrow, an association of business leaders seeking to foster economic prosperity for the Memphis community, has developed a special music industry development initiative:
Memphis’ rich music heritage presents a unique opportunity to re-establish the Music Industry as a major economic engine for the community…while accentuating the City’s image as an appealing place to live, work and play.
The MemphisED economic development plan, administered by the Greater Memphis Chamber and developed through a partnership directed by Memphis Tomorrow, identifies music as a “key target industry.”
The Memphis Music Magnet as an Alternative Economic Development Approach
Supporting Memphis music has emerged as a clear priority that is shaping economic development policy responses. We believe the Memphis Music Magnet program can provide an alternative economic development approach that is a complementary to a traditional model of supporting hard infrastructure and businesses.
As an economic development tool, the Memphis Music Magnet is built on a recognition of the changing nature of the music industry, our current standing among peer cities, and the organic strengths of our local music culture.
Because most elements of the music industry are not capital intensive, the utility of traditional property tax abatement tools (like PILOT) is likely to be limited. And with advances in technology that affect the production, distribution, and consumption of music, the relative importance of the hard infrastructure elements of the industry has been declining for years. Musicians who can record digitally in their own basements, share tracks electronically with collaborators around the world, and promote and sell their own work online have a diminishing need for studios and labels.
The music industry is now going toward independence, and technology is giving us the ability to do that. So we don’t necessarily need a major record company anymore. We just need people who have the knowledge and the skill set. Memphis certainly could be one the forerunners in the independent movement. We have great talent here – some of the greatest musicians. 3- Ralph Sutton, former Motown producer and Memphis music industry veteran
Considering the rapidly changing nature of the industry, and knowing where we stand in terms of traditional industry measurement, our approach recognizes that it will not be efficient to solely target incentives to hard infrastructure and music businesses.
The Memphis Music Magnet focuses on supporting the soft infrastructure necessary to facilitate creative endeavors within communities. Charles Landry defines soft infrastructure as the “system of associative structures and social networks, connections and human interactions, that underpins and encourages the flow of ideas between individuals and institutions.” 4
In other words, our approach is about directly supporting the creative people (the content producers), by removing barriers to creativity and creating an environment that facilitates collaboration, in which musicians and other artists feel valued. It is the creative individuals who contribute not only to the music industry in Memphis but also to the city’s culture, quality of life and sense of place. And through geographic proximity, we are hoping to once again foster the sort of convergence of creative people with diverse backgrounds and styles that contributed to the birth of the Memphis sound. (Advances in music recording and production technology threaten to eliminate the natural opportunities for convergence and collaboration – artists literally bumping in to one another – that were once commonplace.)
The strengths of our music scene lie not in the business elements of the industry (at least not currently), but in a sense of community, and a culture of openness and collaboration.5 Larry Nager captures this unique allure of the Memphis music scene in his chronicle of the city’s musical history, Memphis Beat: The Lives and Times of America’s Musical Crossroads:
In Memphis, music has always tended to emerge from community rather than industry… In the Memphis music business there’s always been more music than business… There’s also a genuinely affectionate attitude, and musical ideas are swapped as freely as stories. With so little industry pressure, the communal feeling of the brass-band scene Handy experienced at Pee Wee’s, or that sixties kids found hanging out at Estelle Axton’s Satellite Record Shop, is free to thrive.
In a recent Memphis Flyer interview Jake Rabinbach, of Jump Back Jake, described his motivation for moving from Brooklyn to Memphis to advance his music career:
It was this story about people operating like a family. It seemed like people were less interested in making it than in getting together and having a good time. And through that, they created an original and creative sound. I really felt like Memphis was calling me. I decided I didn’t need to be in this cultural epicenter and that maybe it would be better to go to Memphis and try to put an R&B band together.
Community is the appeal of Memphis to musicians, and community is what we seek to support with the Memphis Music Magnet. We know that we cannot replicate our indigenous music culture with a business plan, but we believe that we can create an environment in which that culture can flourish.
Music at the Nexus of Creativity, Diversity, and Place-Making
Memphis’ most prominent outlet for creativity has always been music. And Memphis music has often existed at this nexus creativity, diversity and place-making.
Early Beale Street thrived on WC Handy’s blues out of the Mississippi Delta. And while the blues represented an expression of African American culture born from a combination of sounds, Beale Street grew to become a center of African American business in large part due to the activity of Robert Church, the son of a white riverboat captain and a biracial mother. Church became one of the city’s biggest real estate and business investors after the yellow fever epidemic of 1878. Later, rock and roll would emerge from Memphis, as Elvis and other Memphis rockabillies added a new beat and gospel influence to the blues and R&B stylings of Beale Street, and offered up a new pop sound.
But the best example of music at the nexus of creativity, diversity and place is a neighborhood that would come to be known as Soulsville – our proposed target neighborhood for the Memphis Music Magnet.
Nager, L. (1998). The Memphis Beat: The Lives and Times of America’s Musical Crossroads. New York: St. Martins Press
Guralnick, P. (1989) Sweet Soul Music. New York: Harper Perennial.
For a good multi-city industry analysis, see Chicago Music City: A Report on the Music Industry in Chicago.
Williams, D. (2007). Changing Its Tune. Commercial Appeal. Oct 7 (C2).
Landry, C. (2000). The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London: Earthscan. P 133.
In our survey of local musicians and industry folks, “opportunities for artistic collaboration” was among the factors that respondents considered most important in choosing a place to live and work, and was also one of the factors with which respondents were most satisfied in Memphis.