Creative Cape Town

Cape MIC stands for ‘National Centre of Excellence’. Linguists will laugh at this obvious grammatical error, considering the acronym couldn’t be stretched out to mean that if it tried, but it’s been proven in 2010 that the organisation means much more to the Cape than a mere ‘Music Industry Commission’ in the traditional sense.

Stop press. The organisation mandated to represent, develop and investigate the music industry in the Western Cape has been successfully established as a national “Centre of Excellence” for music has approved by the SETA. This is the first time that a grant of this nature has been awarded to a creative industry player.

The achievement means both economic recognition and political impact for a creative sector largely left to its own devices until recently. This  status quo in the music industry has had its own benefits and drawbacks, offering popular artists the opportunity to reach their listeners through larger third parties like radio, record houses and relocation abroad, yet limiting smaller artists to the never-ending sonic cycle of pubs, bars and wedding sets. Somewhere, something had to be done to bring the two together.  But before that happened, the internet swooped in and stole the stage.

Enter web 2.0 – user generated content. Today we know it as the world of rife file sharing and public commentary. But once it was just DOS, maybe a website, and then eventually a media player.  Yes, South Africa already has an established heritage of hefty labels moving large volumes of popular music to the masses, but it is now beginning to reassess its structures in the shadow of free-for-all file sharing and the  independent arena has increased both productivity and marketability with the advent of user-based internet and its sister, social media.  The internet has opened virtual and actual doors – in Europe, no music collaboration of calibre is without a MySpace profile, whether mainstream or madly obscure; in Africa, it’s Facebook and Mxit moving mp3s between music makers, producers and marketers and the open-eared public.  Inspiration? No lack. Education? Huge lack , beyond the basics of uploading your mp3s. What were we saying about bringing extremes together?  Enter Cape MIC.

Cape MIC is in its third calendar year of operation, and in 2010 it turned up the volume  on  education to branch out into areas previously unscored. This heralded a new era in music industry education, manifested in its internships, workshops, projects, musicians’ academy, and a human-run Help Desk.  Creative Cape Town and Cape MIC swapped notes on the uptake of technology and the intake of a localised methodology.

“Creative industries should not function in isolation- fashion, film, craft, visual and performance art should all be considered alongside music,” it posits in its latest newsletter.   “We are a more powerful creative hub if all bodies stand together as a united Creative Collective”.

To that end, Cape MIC facilitated the first fully South African film score earlier this year under the guidance of the world renowned orchestralfilm score composer, Trevor Jones. From start to finish, the soundtrack to the documentary,” My Hunter’s Heart”, took four days and the help of professional  musicians and students from the university of Cape Town and Stellenbosch. This pioneering project has, unsurprisingly,  resulted in further interest in similar work, helping profits remain proudly South African (rather than them rowing offshore in outsourced, post production exercises) and South African’s world class musical talent, resources and project management can begin to go global in the same year that the world came to us for football. But scoring like this means very little if South Africa doesn’t have the insight and information to handle the business beyond the strings and the singing.

To that end, Cape MIC has been running regular low-cost or no-cost workshops across the Western Cape covering music business and technology and music for film. It has also been facilitating a Musicianship Academy – a “multi-layered and unique learning environment” incorporating instruction in the business of music, music technology, digital composition, song writing, general music and instrument knowledge through the support and participation of institutions such as Soundhouse, The Cape Town School of Songwriting and Cape Music Academy. All bodes well, if there were an appropriate abode for all this amazing activity.

Cape MIC, along with others, has had its heart set on City Hall as a venue for the consumption, expansion and development of the creative sectors for some time. In its bid to support a more shared central city space, it hosted a successful series of quality concerts in 2010 dubbed Imagine City Hall Concert Series in conjunction with Creative Cape Town.  Taking place in the beautiful spaces of a beautiful building that belongs to everyone, the efforts were well received by a modest, music appreciating public keen for concerts in clean, attractive spaces.

Looking forward, collaboration is key to 2011.  Cape Music Industry Commission continues to spell out an integrated future for budding talent and active networks in the creative industry with its new knowledge and tech-driven focus. You’re invited to listen in and to play along…