/// southeast music alliance ///

The Southeast Music Alliance was formed on June 8, 2002 in St. Petersburg, Florida. On that day, a handful of Tampa Bay musicians decided to pool their resources in an attempt to raise awareness of the scene they'd worked so hard for. The bands (from all genres) promoted themselves and did everything they thought they should be doing. However, they were getting stiffed at the clubs and ignored by the media. And attendance at local shows was slipping. Were people just not going to see shows in the Bay anymore? Did they truly prefer to sit in front of the television? Or was the crowd just turning over like it does every few years - fans getting older and younger fans coming in to take their place. Furthermore, was the focus on downloading music taking away from the good old-fashioned CD bought at a show? They decided to play a series of showcase concerts and release a compilation CD. They shared e-mail lists, sold each others' merchandise, started a Web ring and vowed to cross-pollinate each other's fanbases and cross-promote their fellow bands regardless of color, creed or genre. Tampa Bay remains the organization's home, but there is indeed no end in sight to where one determined band can network. Now, with the release of their highly-acclaimed compilation CDs and several thousand multi-band bills under their cumulative belts, their legacy continues to spread. However, it still needs your help. Stay up, Tampa Bay. And feel free to use the content on this Web site to spread the word about the music scene ... on both sides of the bridge. We'll see you at the shows.

The Plight of the Performing Artist in Florida

It seems that around the year 2001, the decentralization of music production software and studio-quality equipment turned everyone and their mother into a producer, musician or DJ. While the number of up-and-coming bands and artists may have increased, the quality has not only decreased, but now there must be more processes in place to define and determine the quality of their art. In a live setting, if someone has a bad experience at a club and is less than impressed by a performance, then, like any consumer, they’ve been burned and will regard the band, genre or scene as worthless, continuing to equate the word ‘local’ with ‘amateur.’ It will then take more of a fight to get them off their couch the next time. Remember: what makes us local musicians is simply the fact that we live here.

Which brings us to the geography of Florida. The capacity and willingness of a band to travel and of their fans to follow them into other cities is tantamount to their success. However, not only do we live on a peninsula which makes the ability to tour into other cities and states extremely limited, (not to mention that currently touring national artists sometimes skip our state altogether), but we also live on two sides of a Bay, separated by three bridges. Driving across a bridge into another "city" somehow, year after year, deters a good amount of people from seeking out new forms of art, music and otherwise enriching experiences. This has fragmented the scene into two sides (represented by their respective counties). To succeed and flourish, both sides of the bridge must support and be influenced by each other. People have driven for hours, sometimes days, to see their favorite band. 20 minutes across a bridge is not too much to ask.

Socially and politically, we are also suffering from a battle between the sides of the conservative (typically art-fearing) and the liberal/progressive (typically art-nurturing) collectives. Our population is equal parts 'right’ and ‘left,’ ‘red’ and ‘blue,’ bible-thumpers and yoga instructors. Just when we think we’re ahead of the curve and can take pride in ourselves, our leaders and in our city, someone does away with curbside recycling or cuts funding for arts education or infringes on someone's civil rights. It is a delicate balance that keeps us from truly fostering Florida's "creative class" that the politicians publicly claim to defend and encourage. While an oppressive society can sometimes spawn great works (like protest-era folk art or revolutionary propaganda) it would still be nice to know the medium and the message as every video game either trains a future soldier or inspires a future game designer.

Finally, the specific plight of the artist-as-musician is such that their craft and their product are mutually exclusive. A performing musician (to survive) must not only create a commercially-viable product (their recorded work) that can be reproduced and sold, they must also (until their name is sufficiently branded) re-create the product in its entirety, night after night in front of a crowd - unlike other art forms, which can be created, reproduced and sold on their own individual merit or through means of marketing. To this end, the product (or work of art) is a souvenir - a way to relive the experience of having seen or heard it for the first time. As a business model, this system seems inherently flawed.

That being said, to continually create music (or any art form) year after year in relative obscurity - as 99 percent of bands do - takes determination, vision and resilience - the will to get their message out to people and into their hands because it can only change the world one person at a time. And in an era where we are constantly divided by wars (real or cultural), art and music can - and by all rights should - be the thing that elevates us, unites us while diversifying us and ultimately distracts us from the pain and ugliness and allows us to know truth (and god forbid - beauty) if even for just a short while.

Joran Slane Oppelt (St. Petersburg, 1-23-06)