Take a taxi anywhere in the world and tell the driver that you’re from Manchester, and the driver will mention Man United. You’re also likely to be quizzed, if your driver is under 30 anyway, on what’s hot music-wise in a city so irrevocably linked with music and youth culture, writes Dolan Hewison. Greater Manchester has a new generation of music talent and the Greater Manchester Music Action Zone (GMMAZ) aims to provide excluded young people with opportunities to make music.
One of our initiatives, the Turn It Up! Programme, has bridged the gap between the music business and young people who are ‘industry ready’. GMMAZ’s team has worked in the professional sector as musicians, managers, producers and DJs, and this knowledge is invaluable to young people who want to move from being participants to professionals.
With funding from the Performing Right Society Foundation, and in partnership with Manchester Music Network, Roots Music in Oldham and Rochdale Youth Inclusion Project, we devised Youth In The City. The brand links with In The City, Manchester’s annual unsigned acts event, which is a key date in the music industry’s calendar. Through this, we produced Urbanize Volume One, a professionally packaged CD sampler featuring six young urban artists. The artists received support through a process of vocal coaching, song writing and professional mixing and production in the studio. The CD was distributed to management companies and A&R scouts from major labels through In The City delegate packs. The response to this initial release has been overwhelming, with several labels and publishers expressing interest in the artists featured on the CD.
Young artists from Turn It Up! took their places as full delegates at In The City. All of the young people on the programme come from areas in Greater Manchester that are economically and socially disconnected from the city centre. The opportunity for them to use the distinctive In The City pass for getting into gigs, networking events and panel discussions was key to the Turn It Up! artists’ sense of inclusion at a professional level event. Leading a panel discussion called New Blood, seven young people confidently cut through the hype around downloads, the Pop Idol phenomenon and declining single sales with their own perceptions of a business at a crossroads. In The City can be a strangely democratic affair: young artists found themselves talking to Stevie Wonder’s former manager and other industry representatives in a discussion on career opportunities. Young musicians took to the stage with more established ones in an open jam session and networking event called Local Heroes. We all felt a sense of achievement on seeing our Turn It Up! crew getting this taste of the business at a professional industry event. We will be running a similar programme at Urban Music Seminar’s first north-west event this month in Oldham, and we’ll be back In The City next year.
Dolan Hewison is Project Manager of GMMAZ. t: 0161 274 0647;
e: gmmaz@contact-theatre.org.uk;
w: http://www.gmmaz.org.uk