Secretary-Treasurer

So it must be that many years ago—perhaps decades or even centuries ago—an ill-tempered character, with a chip on their shoulder about the encroaching Industrial Age, must have bestowed upon us denizens of this century the tried-and-true curse that we may “live in interesting times.” So interesting are these times that I struggled all month to decide what to write for this month’s issue—there is so much from which to choose. I settled upon an expanded discussion of artificial intelligence (AI), only to discover that AI was also on the minds of International Executive Officer Luc Fortin and Director of Government Affairs Ben Kessler. Regardless, for the 11 members who faithfully read this monthly column, I shall now add my own spin to the AI discussion.

Why would anyone want AI?

Let’s start with a small discussion about capital, capitalism, and the capitalist economy. In a capitalist economy, the role of capitalism is to aggregate capital in the form of profits. Those profits are gained when the cost of the commodity, i.e., the cost of the raw material and the cost of the labor to transform it into something of value to others, is less than the price for which the thing of value can be sold.

In the time when our present-day curse was laid upon us by that ill-tempered character of yore, this was a fairly simple equation: $ales price minus ($raw material + $labor) equaled profit. Before companies existed, that profit flowed back to the laborer. When the laborer realized that they could step away from the actual labor and entice other laborers to produce the same thing—perhaps for less cost, or perhaps for the product to be sold at a higher price—the idea of a company was born, thus amplifying the profit motive and setting up the dynamic within which we all live today—produce a thing of value for less cost and sell it for a higher price.

And that goal feeds upon itself year after year. Indeed, when a corporation reports that it lost a billion dollars in sales, it’s not saying that $1 billion of its money went out the window, it’s only saying that it didn’t match or exceed the sales of the previous year. Capitalism exists only to grow capital.

That’s where AI comes in. AI is not neutral—it is built to serve capital, not people (no matter what your phone tells you).

Technological change under capitalism is never neutral. It’s driven by the profit motive, and moderated only by the balance of class power and the unruliness of labor. AI, with all its bells and whistles, is no different. It’s here not to expand democracy or improve social well-being, but to automate management, speed up surveillance, and hide exploitation behind the veil of innovation.

AI isn’t loved for its creativity; it’s loved because it replaces people—the perfect servant of capital in its purest form. AI isn’t just a system—it’s the embodiment of a future where labor is optional, cultural landscapes are flattened, and government is outsourced to Skynet.

Against this backdrop, read Kessler’s account of the firing of the head of the US Copyright Office right after having issued a report on generative artificial intelligence (GAI) vis a vis the fair use doctrine. Big tech wants to untether GAI completely from the limitations imposed by fair use—which is to say that your face, voice, instrumental sound, writing, composition, or improvisation would no longer be yours.

Then, put that together with Fortin’s examination of AI in today’s music industry to get a flavor of where the forces currently in control see the live, breathing musician’s role in the music industry.

And then, think about whether the picture that those two columns paint matches your professional and artistic vision of the future of music.

Stories abound about the future health of the labor movement. The US presidential election and the complete domination of the US Congress and Supreme Court by the MAGA elements have taken organized labor’s inconvenient-but-familiar laws and norms in America and stood them on their heads. What was true and dependable at 11:59 a.m. on January 20 was replaced at 12:01 p.m. by vamps and C-flat head charts from the Project 2025 fakebook. The Canadian national elections will soon tell us whether this was only a US-specific development or portends a new North American societal phenomenon where everyone who depends on an hourly wage will be officially marginalized by their governments. I hope and trust that the former is the case.

With that introductory opening paragraph now taken care of, I’d like to offer a little bit on how things shaped up for musicians in 2024, using Federation statistics as the standard of measure. The Federation’s financial and structural health is dependent upon and derived from local unions’ financial and structural health, which is dependent upon and derived from members’ financial health.

AFM membership in 2024 was up a few thousand from 2023. Musicians join locals, not the Federation, so we can conclude that in a post-pandemic world, more musicians in 2024 perceived value in joining with their colleagues under the umbrella of their local unions. We predicted an uptick in membership at the beginning of 2024, and that is, in fact, what manifested. There is work to be had out there, and members are getting the gigs.

Symphonic employment has continued on a generally steady recovery path since the depths of the pandemic, again resulting in meeting symphonic work dues revenue predictions. The Symphonic Service Division’s intrepid band of roving negotiators are as busy as they’ve ever been, working with orchestra committees and local union officers in their continuing quest for ever-better pay by bargaining with symphonic employers. Where there’s bargaining, there must be work, and work is a good thing.

The actors’ and writers’ 2023 strike against the movie producers, however, sent delayed shock waves into the musicians’ world in 2024. Underscoring for movies gets recorded only after the main production, i.e., filming, has been completed. With very few movies made in 2023 due to the strike, the diminished number of scoring sessions in 2024 accordingly hit AFM members in their pocketbooks. Members and locals representing them in major production centers particularly felt the effects of the 2023 strike, and the resulting decrease of 2024 movie work dues in their areas rippled through their books to the Federation’s bottom line.

The Federation’s visa and immigration department, which produces advisory letters for the USCIS in connection with overseas musicians seeking visas to perform in the US, experienced a surge in advisory letter requests in mid-2024 (probably a reaction to the then-rumored understanding that the USCIS was about to impose a significant visa fee increase). The advisory letter fees, together with a miscellaneous insurance claim payout from an old lawsuit, contributed to an expected approximate $1 million surplus for the Federation at year’s end.

Surpluses like that, combined with the surpluses accumulated by the Federation’s previous administration, are good. They mean that the Federation is in a better-than-ever position to support local unions in aggregating the power and influence that we musicians can all make together to foment change, for ourselves, our families and our communities.

The power of music cannot be underestimated. And we musicians, of all the people on this continent, hold that power in our hands. One such example of that power is embodied in Aaron Copeland’s composition, Lincoln Portrait.

The Lincoln Portrait is a very moving piece, designed to frame with music particularly powerful excerpts from speeches of US President Abraham Lincoln. As the orchestra performs the music, a narrator—usually a well-known actor, performer or politician—gives life to Lincoln’s words.

In 1957, Copland traveled to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas to conduct the first Venezuelan performance of the Lincoln Portrait. As Copland later recalled, President Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the country’s reviled and ruthless dictator, who rarely dared to be seen in public, arrived just at the last possible moment to hear the concert.

For that evening’s performance, Juana Sujo, an Argentine actress then living in Venezuela, and an opponent of the Pérez’ repressive regime, took the stage with the orchestra, offering up a fiery narration of the spoken words of the piece. When she uttered the final phrase, “... that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth,” the audience rose and began cheering and shouting so loudly that, as Copland said later, he could not hear the rest of the music.

The energy manifested in the audience by that one performance quickly rippled through the country, and within months Pérez was toppled from power in a coup d’état and forced him to flee the country.

Music. Power.

________

President Gagliardi and I recently traveled to Montréal to discuss matters of mutual importance with the officers of Local 406 (Montréal PQ). I’ve traveled to Canada many times in my life, and I have many friends and relatives on the north side of the 49th Parallel. This trip, however, was unlike any other. Virtually every Canadian I met, upon learning that I was an American, offered some sort of expression of sympathy and pity. I began to feel that I was being seen as someone from a third-world country.

The constitution of a country, as with the currency of a country, only has validity because society chooses to accept that it has validity. That acceptance is the living blueprint for how all of us can live together. When the constitution and the laws that underpin it are cast to one side for political or economic expediency, that validity is nullified, and anarchy follows. Haiti, our neighbor to the south, gives us a vivid illustration of what follows when a country’s foundational norms are displaced by unprincipled autocracies.

When I think about the 44 other men that have held the office of the US Presidency—whether liberal or conservative, straight-forward or Machiavellian, comfortable in their skin or fatefully insecure, narcissistic or empathetic, visionary or bureaucratic—they all shared two common traits that I find devastatingly lacking in the present US administration: A sense of history (of the past and for the future), and a respect for the laws and norms of society.

I therefore reflect upon Lincoln Portrait and words of Lincoln captured in that composition:

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.

We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.

It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says ‘you toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’

No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of people as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Anyone who lived through the early 1980s will remember US President Reagan’s sabre-rattling with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War with its attendant threat of imminent nuclear annihilation—a group of senile old men in the Kremlin and a has-been actor in the White House, each with their gnarled fingers poised over their Big Red Launch Buttons in a high-stakes game of chicken. The citizens of both countries held their collective breaths for three years, not knowing what the immediate future would bring. It was a very stressful time.

As an American citizen, the present-day atmosphere feels much the same. Setting aside the ongoing unraveling of the US federal bureaucracy upon which Americans depend for some semblance of stability in their lives, the new US administration—populated by a bunch of unbelievably rich people—has apparently decided that it’s time to play chicken again. Only this time, it’s not with adversaries, it’s with friends and allies.

The man occupying the chair formerly identified with the Leader of the Free World has decided it’s all up for a real estate negotiation—all ripe for the taking—that Panama has no sovereign authority, Gaza should be converted into a Mediterranean resort, Greenland does not belong to Denmark (never mind the indigenous people of Greenland), and Canada has no more standing in his mind than as a 51st state.

The orange-coated offal about Canada being annexed is particularly disturbing to me as a longtime AFM officer.

It’s disturbing because I’ve always been extremely proud that the members of this one international union have, through thick and thin, preserved and maintained the idea that we as Canadian and American musicians have much more in common than differences, and yet we honor and cherish our respective national and cultural identities.

What do we have in common? Our music, for one. Whether it’s Euro-centric, Latin, African, Asian, indigenous, folk, jazz, rock, country, and on and on, and without regard to the origins of our individual ethnic heritages, we bring what we do together into one grand continental weaving of a multi-layered cultural experience—for our people and for our lives.

We breathe the same air. We drink the same water. Our feet stand on a land unimpressed by political boundaries. We share a language.

These things, both natural and ethereal, are our glue.

And yet, we are still Canadians and Americans. As Canadian and American musicians, we must stand together, because no one else will stand with us. We are here for each other.

So, I say to Canadian members, be not too worked up by that musky odor emanating from behind the orange curtain with its eau d’imperialism wafting through the air. Can’t happen. It’s nothing but a distraction. Guard and honor your water, your air, your land, and your form of government. Hold on to who you are, and remember that we are all in this together.

Since January 20 of this year, the relentless 24-hour news cycle drumbeat has forced me to reflect upon just what makes a nation great. I’ve read Project 2025, and it does not chart a pathway to national greatness.

“A great nation is one that can feed the people.” That’s what a wise old Lakota elder once told me, and remembering those words set me to thinking:

A great nation does not accept that its people have to dig through garbage dumpsters in hopes of finding something to eat. A great nation is one where nobody is hungry, with sufficient food to eat.

A great nation is one where nobody is homeless; where everyone has a warm place to live. A great nation does not accept its people living in cardboard boxes in alleyways. With its “Housing First” strategy, Finland’s homeless rate was reported at .08% in 2020. That’s 8/100ths of a percent.

A great nation is one that takes care of the health of its people. A great nation should not tolerate its people driven to financial desperation because of medical costs. According to a US News and World Report survey, the northern European/Scandinavian countries provide the best public health care systems in the world.

A great nation is one that values the diversity of its people. The people of a great nation will understand the value of honoring and embracing the rich tapestry of cultures that form its collective human experience.

A great nation is one that takes care of its environment for future generations. A great nation does not leave fouled air and water for its children and grandchildren to clean up. The people of a great nation leave their land in better shape than when they came to it.

A great nation is one where the people take only what they need to live well; where those who, through hard work or luck of the draw, have more than they need share their good fortune for the wellbeing of their neighbors.

A great nation takes care that its children are educated with truth, where books are cherished, not banned; where history is embraced, not shaped; where historical honesty, not comfort or convenience, is honored.

A great nation is one that establishes enduring laws for the benefit of all its people, not a select few; laws that mean the same thing no matter who reads them, whether the reader wears a black robe, a suit, a uniform or overalls, whether the reader is in a legislature, a courtroom, a boardroom or a living room.

A great nation values its art and culture, because its art and culture will be its only lasting and durable way of communicating to and being remembered by the future generations.

A great nation is secure in its place in the world and coexists in harmony with its neighbors. The people of a nation existing in harmony are happy.

The Lakota elder told me that the leaders of a great nation always follow the people, leading from the rear­—that way, no one gets left behind.

Eric Stockton Welcomed to Secretary-Treasurer’s Office

Avid readers of the International Musician will have noticed in last month’s issue that AFM Assistant Secretary Wages Argott, who joined my staff a year ago, has returned to his previous position in the President’s Office as Director of Freelance Services and Membership Development. That position is a good fit for Wages’ skills and strengths, and I know he will bring a renewed and refreshed energy to his department.

Wages’ decamping back to the President’s Office created a vacancy on my staff, and I am pleased to announce that it has been filled by Eric Stockton, who assumed the position of Assistant Secretary on January 1. Eric is a freelance guitarist, active in the Local 802 (New York City) musical theater sector, and for the past year has worked as an administrator in the AFM Immigration Services department. In addition to being a bear for accurate and detailed work, Eric brings with him a passion for musicians organizing to build their power in the workplace. He will be a valuable addition to my office and an asset to the Federation.