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of World Socialist website Reporting on Fort Wayne [Indiana] A strike of Philharmonic musicians since it broke out in early December. The seven-week strike raises important questions about the role of art and culture in modern society.
The Philharmonic Orchestra’s 44 full-time and 19 part-time musicians are fighting for decent wages and opposing drastic job cuts that management has proposed or has already imposed. increase. Orchestra bureaucrats have taken advantage of the COVID pandemic to carry out serious attacks.
As explained on the musician’s website, Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra management said, “The Philharmonic has fired the musicians without pay for the entire 2020-21 winter season, and as a blatant insult to the musicians, the Philharmonic We hired outside musicians to play a one-off concert under the Philharmonic banner, allowing the Philharmonic Orchestra to continue to justify a smaller orchestra while contributing to the federal COVID relief funds we raised. I was able to use the department.”
Philharmonic players currently receive an annual salary of $22,000 to $26,000. That’s below the poverty line for her family of three in Allen County, Indiana, where Fort Wayne is located.
The orchestra’s move enraged members of Fort Wayne’s wider arts community. The WSWS has revealed that Australian-born Steven, better known as Sankofa, a famous hip-hop artist, could talk with Eric Bryden about strikes and broader social issues.
“They are asking [the Philharmonic’s players] To be world-class talent working for us…but we’re not going to pay [them] money,” he said. “We want you to do another job, but if you do another job, we still want you to be a world-class musician.”
Sankofa has lived for many years in a city in northern Indiana with a population of about 425,000.in a recent interview with input fort wayne, he told the publication: Fort Wayne is his hometown. ” He has released dozens of albums in collaboration with artists around the world. According to an interview with input fort wayne“Rap is something I do in my off time, so I carve between when I’m with my boys, when I do the laundry, when I load and unload the dishwasher, when I clean up after dinner, when I’m at work. time required. [pre-K teacher]etc. “
The rap artist elaborated on these issues in a recent interview with WSWS.
“What makes Fort Wayne so passionate is the community of artists that brought me here and supported me. There is no fear of taking things away,” he explained. People feel inherently insecure…Fort Wayne is a city that has always wanted to be ‘bigger’.”
Like many Midwestern cities, Fort Wayne was once a major industrial center for companies such as General Electric and General Motors. A significant industrial decline occurred throughout the second half of the 20th century as businesses left the region in search of lower wages and less restrictive restrictions.
“Ever since I’ve been in Fort Wayne, there have been times when huge buildings not far from downtown were vacant,” Sankofa Briden explains. “We were hoping they would try to incorporate some of our local businesses into these large landfill projects,” he said. I got a lot of properties.”
“It started with the ballpark,” Sankofa said, referring to Parkview Field, which opened in 2009 as the home of the Fort Wayne Tincaps (San Diego Padres Farm Club) minor league baseball team. “We put all this money into downtown revitalization…you got a spot that serves cool, trendy restaurants, avocado toast, and fancy drinks,” he said.
“It was built in a slum kind of place where I used to live… After a while there was a riverside development. Super cool. Lots of parks and trails. It’s named after the famous Vera Bradley Company, which was previously based in Fort Wayne, but then outsourced to China.”
The Bradley Hotel Fort Wayne was built by an “outside investor,” the rapper added. “I think he was very wise for one thing it did. [from a public relations standpoint]I mean, they hired local artists to decorate the hotel with art, giving it a local flavor. But Sankofa explained, “It was very difficult for many of them to get paid in the end.”
He described how his friends were evicted from the property they lived in after contacting the investor and landlord about defective appliances. “They were told that their lease was ‘monthly’ and that the rent had just been increased…the rough location is great, but they’re starting to relocate now,” he said.
Bryden recalls the city’s past, saying: [US] Bombing list, as at the time it was a highly industrialized area.According to Fort Wayne News – SentinelIn addition to the Vera Bradley Company having its headquarters there, the “monitor top” refrigerator, “one of the most successful consumer products made by General Electric since the 1920s,” is located in Fort Wayne. invented and produced.
GE chemist George Jacobs created a form of chemical enamel known as wire insulation. The Model T was an important innovation as it helped make Ford the first affordable family car. In addition, an acoustic engineer working for Magnavox in Fort Wayne in the 1930s was responsible for manufacturing the first dual-his speaker “stereo” sound his system.
“One of the directors of the Philharmonic Orchestra is Chuck Slack,” said the director of Fort Wayne-based Sweetwater Sound, an international music equipment supplier. According to Sankofa, Slack “has been doing something for the arts” in the region, but as a member of the Philharmonic Orchestra’s board of directors, he insists he “needs to pinch a penny.”
This has led to debates about the role of culture and the role of educators in capitalist societies. It soon became apparent that there was a connection between Bryden-Sankofa’s approach to music and his profession as a public school teacher.
“One of the basic principles of the philosophy we teach is that children are capable,” he explained. But in capitalism, “we don’t treat even adults as if they were competent.” When the question of democratic rights came up, he replied: I am not a politician. I am an independent musician. “
In November he released never easy, an album produced by Chicago-based beatmakers Bless 1. In the song “100 Languages,” he talks about the process of working with children: Again, children have the ability, but the process is gradual / Immediately the eyes light up and the sight is magical / They hear the sounds of the sounds and the letters written on them becomes / Characters are built up in strings until words come together.
On “Aprons in the Abattoir” from the same album, Sankofa touches on gentrification (“He who has the money will take his place / Suburban investors will only have the money in their pot”). don’t care’). However, the lyrics also show dissatisfaction with the population. “The system is broken, but it sends us through the meat grinder/And marches us to the gospel we keep climbing,” he raps. I hear you being guided.
of course, human The population is not passive in this way. There are political and ideological difficulties. At every point, workers reveal their willingness to struggle. They are suppressed by current organizations, including trade unions that support capitalism. The very determination of the Fort Wayne musicians expresses a new surge of working-class militancy and anger.
Sankofa said his lyrics were a reference to “the constant need to buy more, which keeps us in this perpetual cycle of debt.” He said that “Slaughterhouse Apron” was “basically my take on capitalism”, but that “I always felt that once my work came out, it would be defined by the listener.” is the idea of
Describing his approach to rap music, the veteran hip-hop artist explained: Rap is… a place where you create worlds with your friends and have fun. I say to my collaborators: If this feels like pressure to you, I don’t want to do it. I want to do this because it’s something I care about, not because I need to “sharpen” this rut until there’s no joy in it.
He continues: glide drexler, which basically describes my philosophy on rap as a passion. That’s how I relax and explore the interconnectedness of language and the languages in which we express ourselves. I try not to be offended. That’s what they understand. But that fun, that childlike innocence… Picasso said that everyone is “born an artist”. I consider it sacred. “
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