Urban Music and Entrepreneurship by Joy White

Author:Joy White [White, Joy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781317270904
Google: 0zMlDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-11-03T04:30:43+00:00

Creative enterprise: individual pursuits and collaborative practice

Participants in the urban music economy draw on the business practices and entrepreneurial spirit that are intrinsic components of both the Jamaican and UK sound systems (Witter 2004). For artist-entrepreneurs in this sector the context is, on the whole, one of low qualifications and poor employment prospects. Therefore enterprise – whether it takes the form of live performance, the staging of events, the sale of CDs, music downloads and other merchandise, DVDs, studio time, publicity or marketing materials – can afford opportunities, particularly where paid employment is scarce. Sometimes this may be the only way that young people from marginalised communities can have the kinds of jobs they desire in the creative economy.

Transformation in terms of entry into new identities is a real prospect for those that do participate, and this includes the former DJs, like Fred, who have now reinvented themselves as teachers and sell a neo-liberal concept of doing for self that is rooted in an imagined African-American construction of Africanness. Also, although the push for participation in this sector often comes from economic adversity, my informants also wanted to be financially autonomous, creative individuals, and they believed this was possible via self-employment and micro-entrepreneurship.

However, although it is evident that these entrepreneurs are ‘buying in to neo-liberal capitalism’ (Gilroy 2013, p. 34) in an individual attempt to overcome advanced marginality, this effort occurs at the same time as collective endeavour, and the ‘bring in’, or collaborative, activity is a key aspect of the urban music economy, nationally and internationally. There is also evidence of community activity as exemplified by UK grime artists JME and Skepta from BBK crew, who recently built a water pump in their father’s village in Nigeria (JmeVerified account 2014). I contend that within the context of the urban music economy, economic enrichment is a collective enterprise as well as an individual one and it can offer a valid route to employment, albeit with the caveat that the endless demand from consumers for new product means that in many respects creative enterprise becomes something akin to a factory production line.

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