Trying to Silence Free Concerts

Unfortunately, the music recording industry is once again trying to dump a valuable program that is primarily responsible for sponsoring 35,000 free live musical concerts across the country each year--a million performances since they began in 1948.

The American Federation of Musicians will try to block the industry’s counterproductive move in contract negotiations that start today in New York, and they hope to do it without a strike.

The talks involve the six major recording companies, and although they negotiate together, each has a separate contract with the union. Small companies almost always follow the pattern set by the majors.

The companies want to stop their contributions to a fund that pays musicians to play in concerts that are open to the public without charge.

The union’s leaders are rightly concerned about the generally declining status of live music in this country. Music is being taught less and less in the public schools these days, and the loss of those free live concerts could only worsen things.

Also at stake are an estimated 300,000 jobs for musicians--both union and non-union--who are paid mostly out of a small royalty contributed by the industry on each record it produces.

Norman Samnick, the industry’s chief negotiator, says the concerts are dandy, but there’s no reason for the record companies (now mostly foreign-owned) to continue footing most of the bill for the concerts in the United States and Canada.

But there is a good reason: It was recorded music that displaced live musicians on a massive scale.

In 1942, the rapidly increasing displacement of musicians by records infuriated James Caesar Petrillo. He was a short, pugnacious fourth-grade dropout who fought with almost anyone, from Chicago gangsters and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to members of the union he led with an extremely firm hand from 1940 to 1958.

Petrillo, who dreamed up the free concert program to cope with the job losses, became one of the country’s best-known but not best-loved labor leaders after he led a bitter, two-year strike to make the dream a reality.

Petrillo argued that since the industry produced the records that were putting musicians out of work, it should make amends by paying into what is still called the Music Performance Trust Fund that finances the concerts.

The industry flatly rejected Petrillo’s proposal and a strike against the record companies began.

World War II was raging, and music helped to ease some of the war news. Jitterbugging young people were listening to the big bands on records and on radio stations that played recorded music.

“Little Caesar,” as Petrillo was known, was hated by millions, especially teen-agers, for muting the sound of music.

But he ignored the widespread resentment and even orders from the War Labor Board to end the strike. He ignored a personal appeal from Roosevelt. The Senate launched an investigation.

The walkout didn’t end, however, until 1944, when the record industry finally agreed to put up a small fraction of 1% of its income for the free live concerts that quickly became, and remain, a mainstay of live music.

The disgraceful decline in music education in the public schools in recent years underlines the need to continue a program that lets millions of schoolchildren hear and see live musicians instead of only hearing them on records or watching them on television. Adults, too, attend the free concerts, held in hospitals, libraries, parks, churches, senior citizen homes and mental health centers.

The recording industry has been whittling away at the program for years. Its contributions totaled only $7 million last year from an industry gross income of $6.2 billion. In 1980, before serious cutting began, they totaled nearly $19 million.

While the industry contributions form the base of the concerts and are a key to their success, they are helped by thousands of local governments, businesses, unions and community groups that co-sponsor the concerts.

There was almost a strike over the issue in 1987, but it was averted when the union’s then-president, Victor W. Fuentealba, agreed to yet another cut in the industry contributions.

The cut was approved by a vote of recording industry members after a bitter internal union fight and after Fuentealba warned the musicians they could never win a strike. He said there were too many potential strikebreakers among the union’s 185,000 members, since only about 15% of them earn enough to make a living from music.

Fuentealba was defeated for reelection largely because of what the members felt was his sellout on the concert issue. Although the union has publicly said it is a strike issue, its new president, J. Martin Emerson, knows such a strike would be almost impossible to win. As an alternative he has started a nationwide campaign for public support.

The campaign has these simple themes: the concerts are extremely valuable; the industry should help sponsor them because records eliminated most live music, and the industry can easily afford to continue and even increase its contributions. Emerson doesn’t hesitate to add a neat extra thrust to reach those who worry about the increasing influence on the United States of the Japanese and other foreigners.

Only two of the six record companies that control 96% of the American music market are still American-owned. Emerson says maybe that is why Sony of Japan, which owns CBS Records, and the other firms don’t think it’s important to spend a little money to benefit their best customers, the American and Canadian consumers.

Perhaps the musicians’ campaign may help them win their dispute with the industry without a strike. It is certainly one of the few union disputes that is likely to win widespread public sympathy.