Tag: music

When artists carry the unfair burden of bad organisation

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Promoters should want their guests to have the best musical experience possible, hence should treat artists’ technical and logistics needs as a priority – as long as demands remain reasonable.
However, a lot of promoters consider they have “bought” the talent, so artists should smile and perform like circus dogs, jumping through every flaming hoop, because it will be primarily their career that gets damaged if the show goes wrong or if they leave because they could not take the abuse.

How do we expect marginalised artists to deliver professional stage performances when getting through soundcheck is already an exhausting battle, and how could promoters not support the artists they booked delivering the best show possible?

As we saw with Grimes’ Coachella fiasco DJ set in 2024, folks were quick to attack a woman’s career until her technician came clean online. Despite his explaining how his rushed tech preps lead to a performance failure, people fell for the clickbait articles and looked the other way when the real story was revealed.

Both promoters and technical teams are protected by their anonymity, and while they benefit from artists’ fame and stage work, once an artist or their team raise an organisational issue, they are quick to shift the blame on the talent being “difficult” or “disorganised”, gaslight performers into thinking they are the problem – and this of course can escalate a lot depending on how marginalised the artist is.

51% women have faced gender-based discrimination in the music industry. We think of lack of opportunity, pay gap, ageism/racism/family status double standards, sexual harassment… but maybe the most common act of casual sexism is technicians patronising women and gender-diverse musicians, schooling them on their own sound, refusing to provide professional service, becoming dismissive or agressive if the musicians keep on asking for their technical needs to be met.

• Promoters and event organisers need to vet their team and be responsible for all aspects of their events, including techs.
• Artists and agents must make it clear on booking contracts that the tech rider is a sine qua non condition to perform.
• Technical teams who are already doing the work, need to make it known, and grow awareness on good practices.
• Technical teams who still believe they can project their own shortcomings on marginalised artists, need to re-train or retire.

DEI x Music x New Tech

This article is based on a talk at a W3b Lab online event featuring dif co-founder Nadia Says.
Read the full talk HERE and read about sustainable AI in music on Mixmag.

Art and new tech can work hand in hand in ways that are not necessarily cringe or gimmicky when artists and curators have a serious understanding of that synergy. Many argue that oftentimes, artworks featuring new tech just use buzz technologies, and that it doesn’t bring anything special to the art. Plus the tech scene suffers from an over-representation of cis-white men and of the stereotype of the “tech bros” who may not have connections to the art scene, nor share its essential values, and have already polluted new tech with sexism, racism, ableism…
To that we can answer that an AI will be as racist or anti-racist as what you train it with. And indeed we’ve all heard of incidents with AI being racist, for example with facial recognition used as a dystopian surveillance system – multi-disciplinary artist Vanessa Reynolds reacted to such an occurrence in Detroit. Or with how Capital Records had to drop their racially insensitive and appropriating AI rapper.

There are other DEI challenges, such as green sustainability, that has to remain central to new tech advancement, but also needs to be put into the context of previous means that may have been as polluting, to avoid unwarranted opposition to new tech.
Yet another equity challenge as in many industries, is how the Western world hoards high-paying jobs while exploiting the Global South with low-paid and high risk jobs such as online violence moderation – read reports on Big Tech’s Success: The untold stories of the exploitation of African workers and HERE about AI-training.

So why should musical creatives build impactful space on web3 when facing all these challenges?
The case for collective ownership is one that seems to belong on the blockchain; the reason why it would be necessary in the music industry is to ensure fairness for artists, to make sure creatives do not build communities for the benefit of corporations and do not reap the reward – such as when Bandcamp was bought twice without its community having any say, or Soundcloud, built by the community, but where many users and staff had to leave the platform after creating immense added value for major labels and shareholders.

Another aspect of how web3 will gain importance in the music scene, is the advent of UGC (user-generated content) in its broader meaning: the audience no longer wants to just receive music, they want to participate; this is part of the gamification of the music industry. This can be done through NFTs and Metaverse shows, among other new tech avenues.
Additionally about Metaverse and streamed shows, while these virtual experiences will never replace in-person live shows, they are needed alternatives to address certain DEI concerns. Here is a very shortened list of reasons why some music lovers cannot attend concerts, festivals, and club nights in person often or at all: immunodeficiency, tinnitus, social anxiety, gender-based safety concerns, distance, finances, age, need for lyric subs, allergy to smoke, substance abuse early recovery, having to take care of someone at home, etc.

Web3 is a chance for artists and their teams to have better visibility and control over distribution and payment splits, direct connections to fans, not giving up big parts of their income to middlemen, having new ways to copyright their work on the blockchain, and the list goes on.
This also means that music field workers, including artists, would need to learn how to use new platforms, that are not straight-forward and evolve literally every minute, and not always with full transparency or safety. While this is by no means easy, it remains not only a great opportunity, but also a duty: if genuine scene actors, especially those marginalised, do not pro-actively make space in these systems, the result will be new Metas, Spotifys, Live Nations, and other corporations that milk “content” without giving back to the artists or their fans. The time for creatives to make use of new tech, and with that process improve new tech for all, is now.

Roma Culture in Europe

Romani people are most famous in Europe for their rich musical culture. The words Roma and Romani have different spellings, and there are many ways that Roma people may be called, some are correct while others are racist slang.

Oftentimes people wonder if the word Gypsy is correct or not, here is a short guide: if you are not Gypsy yourself and if you are not talking about the pop flamenco band Gypsy Kings, do not use that word, simply use the word Roma – or when possible, ask the person how they prefer to be referred to.
The word Gypsy is only used to speak about a specific group of Roma folks who mostly live in Spain or the South of France, Gypsy is never written without an upper G as it refers to an ethnic group (same as Asians or Arabs for example), and it should never be used to describe a person living a bohemian lifestyle.

What about Gypsy Jazz you might ask? The genre is usually credited to Django Reinhardt who was Manouche, another community of the Roma diaspora, so a better name for that music is Jazz Manouche. The same as nobody would call a Spaniard a Brit, there is no reason to mix up different groups of the Roma diaspora, especially because the word Gypsy as a blanket term for all Roma folks has mostly been used as a racist slur during the Holocaust or Pogroms of World War II, when an approximate half of the Roma population was murdered – surely this is not a memory we should casually bring up when talking about jazz.

Some will say the Holocaust was a long time ago, we can rehabilitate the term… While Romas are the biggest minority in Europe (1 to 10% depending on the country), they are still widely discriminated against: cultural funding is not distributed in proportion to the number of Roma people in the EU, Roma folks are refused education/jobs/housing/paperwork, the Roma genocide is often forgotten, average Europeans are not even sure what a Roma person and their challenging history are, which leads to micro-agressions, all the way to forced sterilisation and hate crimes such as burning homes or lynching.

If you would like to know more about where Roma people come from and what sort of music and dance they have brought to Europe all the way from India over several centuries, the film Latcho Drom is a great intro, or if you want an example of how Roma music influenced or was influenced by other cultures, here are a podcast & feature and an Andalusia-themed radio show. In Berlin, there is a Roma film fest every year, Flamenco dance or guitar lessons are quite popular as are Jazz Manouche concerts and jams, you can also visit the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture for more info.

MENA, WANA, SWANA, a growing force in the music industry

Did you say, MENA, WANA, SWANA?
MENA: Middle-East and Northern Africa, most commonly used, but should be retired soon as Middle-East is a post-colonial term. NB: calling Northern Africans Arabs is also a colonial habit, Northern Africa has been colonised several times, and the scars are ever-lasting. Another possible word is Maghreb (although it seems to have a colonialist etymology too in the Arab language), but better to check individually because Egyptians for example, may not agree with this association.
WANA: West Asia and Northern Africa, seems alright, but some need more refined geography.
SWANA: South-West Asia and Northern Africa, possibly the best one, but also the least likely to be understood by a bigger number of readers/listeners.
The list of countries included in these terms varies depending on one’s understanding of socio-economics and geography. At dif we would tend to say, the more the merrier, but of course the decision to be included or not belongs to the people/s one might be referring to.

No matter the acronym, culture, and especially music, from South West Asia and Northern Africa are gaining importance by the minute, whether in terms of industry, see this 2025 report by SSSO, or in the hearts of fans. Artists such as Emel (read more about the electronic music scene of her native Tunisia), Omar Souleyman, Nicole Moudaber, or Sevdaliza have become household names. More locally in Berlin, the new SWANA capital away from the regions, and despite high levels of discrimination (daily racism, reduced opportunities, cancelled jobs for obscure / not so obscure reasons, censorship, etc.), we also clearly notice a growth in representation and events, as well as more generally in global sales with an increase of 35% in recent years, on streaming platforms – when streaming is the main income in the music industry in the SWANA Region, with a UAE edition of Mutek, with the ever-enduring festival Irtijal, as a general source of rejuvenation of the industry, and so much more.

• Have some suggestions on acronyms, want to learn more about SWANA communities in the cultural and music scenes in Berlin, want to support these communities, need support as a member of these communities or ally? You can write us via info @ dif-ev .org or via the (anonymous) contact form.
• Want to read more about SWANA music from a trusted source, check out articles by Christina Hazboun.
• Want to share your own SWANA news or learn more about how the industry side of the music scene is developing in the region, check out the crowd-sourced platform Maqam Wire.