Photo by Verne Equinox – Own work, CC BY 3.0
On today’s CHMA daily news:
- MLA Megan Mitton’s bill to include Indigenous languages in school curriculum;
- Music journalist Tara Thorne on gender disparity in the ECMAs;
- An apartment fire in Moncton leaves eight people without homes;
- and the Maritimes COVID numbers update.
Two new cases in the Maritimes
New Brunswick reported one new case of COVID-19 on Tuesday.
A person in their twenties has tested positive in Zone 1, the southeast region.
The case is related to travel outside the Atlantic bubble and the person is self-isolating.
There are now two known active cases in New Brunswick.
Officials have reported no new cases of COVID-19 in Nova Scotia, for the seventh day in a row.
Two more people recovered from the disease in the province, leaving Nova Scotia with just one active case.
Meanwhile over in PEI, officials have announced another new case, unrelated to other recent cases.
As essential worker in his 30s who had recent international travel tested positive for COVID-19.
The man has been self-isolating since arriving in PEI.
PEI is testing hundreds of people related to previously announced cases in a hospital worker and patient. So far, no new positive cases have been found.
The province currently has nine active cases.
Moncton apartment fire
A fire forced eight people out of their homes in downtown Moncton on Monday.
The fire started on the deck of an older house on Dominion Street that is set up as a three-unit apartment building.
No one was injured in the fire.
The Canadian Red Cross arranged emergency housing for three adults and three children.
Indigenous languages may soon be part of the New Brunswick public school experience
On Monday, a bill to enshrine the teaching of Indigenous languages in New Brunswick’s public schools took one more step toward becoming provincial law, with support from all parties.
Erica Butler called up the bill’s sponsor, Memramcook-Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton, to find out more.
Click to listen
Tara Thorne on the ECMAs and why they are dominated by men
The annual East Coast Music Awards got handed out last weekend in a pre-recorded broadcast from St. John’s, and the list of winners shows a dramatic gender imbalance.
23 of the 27 music category awards went to men or all-male bands.
Only 4 music category awards—less than 15%—went to women or bands with women.
Veteran journalist and musician Tara Thorne was one of the first people to notice the nearly all-male slate of award winners this year.
She told CHMA Music Director Christina Acton that after a decades long career in music journalism, she was not necessarily surprised.
Click to listen:
“I mean, ECMA does not have a great track record of, you know, awarding women or diverse people or really much more outside of the standard white man with a guitar. I mean, to be fair, that is, you know, the principles they were founded on in the early 90s. It was a Celtic boom, that’s what we did, then. But we don’t do that now. And to me, in 2020, to see that amount of men winning, I can’t… I don’t know how you can work for that organization, see that list, and think this is fine. So I just felt like with everything that’s going on in the world, you know, we’re going through many reckonings, in terms of Me Too, Black Lives Matter, sort of all of these things that are really fueling our fires politically right now. This show… the show this year just felt way out of date and way more tone deaf than it normally ever has.”
Thorne says one of the problems is that the ECMA jury process relies on music industry volunteers.
And with up to 60 submissions in a category, the task to actually listen to new or unestablished artists may not be happening as it should.
Click to listen:
“They’re relying on the goodwill of sort of the music industry at large. And they’re busy people. And it’s sort of just like, No, I’m not going to listen to some band I never heard of, I don’t have time for that. There’s 59 other people I have to listen to. So like, that’s how it happens. You know it. And so it makes, it makes it very hard for emerging people and new people to really break in.”
Thorne says change needs to happen at the top and the bottom. The people who have dominated the industry for decades need to make room for new artists, and organizations like the East Coast Music Association need to look at their membership rosters.
Click to listen:
“They also need to make joining the ECMA and all of the provincial music industry associations appealing to artists. Because I’m finding, I’m seeing young artists, diverse artists, you know, queer artists, they’re just like, that’s not cool. I’m not going to do it. Why would I pay these people however much money in a year to help me with nothing. So they’ve really got to get to do a push to diversify the membership. And then they have the people at the top have to jump in to this century, and take a look around at what they’re doing and how they can make it better.”
Thorne says that people on the outside are sometimes not aware of how entrenched and structured the music industry is, and how this affects opportunities for new artists.
Click to listen:
“This is still a patriarchy. We’re trying. We’re pushing. We’re trying to talk about it, we’re trying to fix it. It’s gonna take a long time. These are deeply entrenched systems that we’re living in and the East Coast is a good 10 to 20 years behind the rest of the world on a good day. So it takes a while to you know, to make it heard, but I think you’re gonna see it happen and, and I hope I hope they’re having some, you know, internal conversations at the ECMA about this stuff because again, I think because it happened in the dead of summer… this stuff usually happens in the spring when there’s lots going on. But because it’s summer, there’s a pandemic, there’s not a ton of news, there’s more than we would like, but there’s not a ton of news. So I feel like people are really paying attention to this for the first time, which is like not something I ever thought I’d see in my career. So, hope remains.”
Musician and journalist Tara Thorne shared her thoughts on the gender disparity recently on display with the East Coast Music Awards, in conversation with CHMA Music director Christina Acton.
Men or all-male groups dominated this year’s ECMAs with awards in 23 out of 27 music categories.
You can hear the whole conversation with Tara and Christina over at chmafm.com.
CHMA Daily News is hosted Mahalia Thompson-Onichino, and produced by Erica Butler, with contributions from Bruce Wark, Meg Cunningham, Aura-Lynn Groomes, Geoff de Gannes, and James Anderson.
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