Revival of entertainment and tourism should not be linked

I believe local performers should focus first on the only year-round audiences they can count on — other locals. Do that, and they’ll be ready if and when tourists arrive. And tourists will want to hang out where the locals go.

Most of what passed for entertainment during the heyday of tourism had no local roots — no local well from which new talent could be dipped. It was the hoteliers who decided that the music they would bring to their stages had to be calypso, or nothing. Our entertainers learned to play, sing and dance to calypso but it wasn’t in their bones. And when hoteliers stopped paying for it, the genre faded and has virtually died. Sure there are a few who can bring forth someone else’s calypso composition, but there is no local tradition of calypso — or any other music, for that matter — that can breed musical offspring.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t local muscal or entertainment talent — there is, and lots of it. But in addition to the changes in tourism as a market for local music, the appetites for and access to music have altered drastically.

It used to be that if you wanted to hear live music you had to go to where the music was being performed. A lot of ingredients had to come together. A band you wanted to hear had to be playing at a certain time and place and you had to know that time enough ahead of time to arrange your schedule, and know that place well enough go there.

Spontaneity

These days, almost any band or singer of international fame is available on MTV or VHI or any of the ethnic equivalents in professionally staged performances that outdo almost anything to be found on a local live stage. Better-than-live entertainment can be downloaded and stored on iPod and other MP3-type players for regurgitation in even the most remote of locations at a moment’s notice. And while anyone who has ever been to a live performance of a class entertainer knows that nothing canned can match the spontaneity and electric-like charge of real live music, for the average audience performances on screen at the flick of a switch are more than adequate.  Using synthesizers and drum machines, a single performer can replicate a brass band or symphony orchestra as accompaniment.

Musicians have more than enough work to do to compensate for these developments. They ought not be banking and working on tourism to open a path for them. Here’s why.

Cruise ships now call the shots for their passengers’ entertainment and aren’t likely to let local musicians poach on their captive audiences. So far, government negotiators don’t have the moxie to get a better deal.

Bermuda’s hallmark quality of cordial and friendly people has taken a serious hit. People are far more surly, cantankerous and discourteous than we used to be. We’re more aggressive on the roads, less civil behind the counter, and testy on the sidewalks. And the frequency and severity of violence is on the rise. It hasn’t helped than some of our most visible leaders seem perpetually grumpy and unable to make a pronouncement in public without mouthing somebody off. This general surliness has been compounded by the heightened racial tension. The determined effort on the part of some race policy-makers to foster a unified black vote by painting all whites as plantation owners was short-sighted in the extreme. In targeting whites as the enemy, they seemed to forget that vast majority of our tourists are white, and that the racial hostility they cultivated to scare up black votes now helps scare off white tourists. aThese are aspects of Bermuda’s attractiveness that are seriously broken. They can’t be fixed by beach bars and gambling casinos. And they can’t be fixed by entertainers.

To revive their industry, entertainers should focus on what they can do. The most successful model over the past decade was Hubie’s Bar. Find ways to replicate that model. Shine’s place and Chewstick are on the right track; find the dollars keep them open for the few years they need to take root. Stake out a few regular venues where locals can play and sing, listen and dance and put local entertainment back on the local map. Start small and make it work small. Then make it big.