Tag Archives: executive board members

Executive Board Members, Officer Columns

The AFM: Finding Strength in a Diverse Membership

February 19, 2019 IM

by John Acosta, AFM International Executive Board Member and Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) President

Diversity within our union cannot be celebrated enough. While our membership runs the gamut in ethnicity, musical genre, age, and gender, the paucity of diversity within many of the workplaces in which we have representational duties continues to impede our effectiveness and growth. While progress has been made within our profession to foster and embrace diversity, an increasingly concerted and deliberate effort is needed to provide a clearer path to increase diversity among officers and members alike.

Last year, the League of American Orchestras, along with partners the Sphinx Organization and the New World Symphony, announced the National Alliance for Audition Support, an initiative that began with a discussion at a Diversity Forum convened by the League and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation some years back.

Our employer partners recognize the need to diversify the workplace in order to reflect the ever growing and evolving communities they serve. While the AFM embarks on programs of our own, we should also support and engage with our employers on joint initiatives that will help elevate underrepresented communities.

This February, as we celebrate Black History Month and look ahead to our triennial convention, we have a twofold opportunity to highlight diversity within our Federation and help kick off the AFM Diversity Awards application process. The AFM Diversity Awards were created to recognize outstanding examples of diversity that foster underrepresented communities within our organization, such as minority and LGBTQ groups. The awards are also designed to recognize exceptional artists who are actively engaged in underrepresented music genres.

By recognizing these noteworthy individuals, we will help to unlock the transformational potential that has always existed within our union, but is far too often overlooked. A recent Brookings Institute study informs us that new census data confirms the importance of racial minorities as the “primary demographic engine of the nation’s future growth” and that “by 2045, whites will comprise 49.7% of the population in contrast to 24.6% for Hispanics, 13.1% for blacks, 7.9% for Asians, and 3.8% for multiracial populations.”

Our union need only tap into an already diverse membership, a membership that I believe may be a great organizing vehicle. When you look at where our Federation already represents musicians, we are truly a reflection of the current and increasingly diversifying America. From the Grammy Awards to the American Music Awards, from the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show, our musicians are already ambassadors from minority communities across America. Our challenge is how to engage and activate our multicultural membership to inspire them to organize the next generation of musicians into our Federation, and ultimately become the future leaders of tomorrow’s AFM.

Executive Board Members, Officer Columns

Are You Using the AFM Joint Venture Agreement to Protect your Intellectual Property?

July 2, 2018 IM

by Dave Pomeroy, AFM International Executive Board Member and President of Local 257 (Nashville, TN)

How does it work?

The AFM Joint Venture Agreement is designed for self-contained bands who want to document their recordings and business relationship with a no-cost contract that protects everyone involved. For every successful band, there are many more who don’t make it, and loose ends can come back to haunt you. When you are in your creative and exploratory mode, it’s not always easy to talk business with collaborators. But at some point, it is important to make sure you are all on the same page. A handshake agreement is great until it doesn’t work, and then it really doesn’t work! Along with completing the process of publishing your original tunes, you need to protect the intellectual property rights of your musical performances as well.

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Executive Board Members, Officer Columns

It’s Time for Solidarity

January 17, 2018 IM

by Tina Morrison, AFM International Executive Board Member and Vice President of Local 105 (Spokane, WA)

How the world is changing, and so quickly, too! I’m writing this in December and who knows what January is going to look like. I, for one, am weary of reactionism.

We know that making music is progressive. Learning the instrument, building muscle memory, and developing our “ears.” And then, using those skills, we create vibrations in the air that evoke emotions, enriching the lives of those who listen. Music flows like a river through the air—moving and changing, not always happy or pretty or predictable, reflecting life.

Taking what we’ve learned, we can choose notes, chords, and rhythms that work together to create melodies and harmonies. We can influence our audience to dance or to cry. It is a learned skill that comes with work, effort, and a plan. We train ourselves to react in some ways, listening to those around us to enhance the sound, and not allowing ourselves to be distracted by outside influences that could interrupt the flow. It takes discipline.

So, now is a time for great discipline. We need to trust what we know and not allow outside influences to distract us. We know that working together we have strength and can build. It’s a time for solidarity. So, let’s lean on our strengths and focus on our plan as defined in our mission statement, which you can find on the AFM website (afm.org) under the “About” section, by clicking on “Mission & Bylaws.” Use your voice meaningfully by being involved in your AFM local. Your knowledge and experience, blended with other member musicians, can help create or maintain a solid foundation for professional standards in your community.

I would be remiss not to take a moment and comment on the rise of women and women’s issues over the last year—pointed conversations, actions, and publicity unlike anything I can remember. How does all of this relate to musicians and our union? It’s been a work in progress for a long time and there have been successes. The drastic changes in our orchestras due to “blind” audition requirements that were negotiated into collective bargaining agreements are a testament to a thoughtful process. As proof, compare pictures of orchestras in the 1950s and 1960s with those of today.

The freelance world is more complicated. Generally, there is no collective bargaining process to provide influence. “Purchasers” of freelance music are less likely to consider the gender make up of the band they engage. Female band leaders can still run into discrimination. It’s very difficult to prove, much less change whether a band is hired or not. We can be part of the conversations to drive changes that will help erode old prejudices and open the door for more fairness and opportunity in musical work. Participation and developing consensus are keys to meaningful change.

Cultural changes such as what we are experiencing are very exciting. As we celebrate the new enlightenment empowering women, I suggest we also remain thoughtful so that the changes that come are the changes we want.

Executive Board Members, Officer Columns

The Power of the (Digital) Paper Trail

October 10, 2016 IM

by Dave Pomeroy AFM International Executive Board Member and President of Local 257 (Nashville, TN)

I think many AFM members have had their own personal “tipping point” where suddenly the value of union membership really hit home. I had been an AFM member for about a year when I played a concert with Don Williams at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands, not long after joining his band in 1980. It was my first ever stadium gig, which was pretty amazing in itself, and Don—as always—paid us well for the show. Unbeknownst to me, the concert was being filmed. A live clip of the song “Good Ole Boys Like Me,” which was number one on the country charts at the time, was shown on a TV show called America’s Top 10 twice over two months. I got paid more than I made for playing the concert not once, but twice. From that point on, I got it. This was my first experience with the power of the paper trail, which is a direct result of the protections of working under the AFM contract.

Dave Pomeroy hands Local 257 (Nashville, TN) member Solie Fott a check for new use of a 1962 recording Fott performed on.

People ask me all the time, “What exactly does the musician’s union do?” That’s a question with a lot of answers! I reply that we represent the interests of professional musicians all over the US and Canada, followed by, “How much time do you have?”

If it is more than a casual inquiry, I try to ask a few questions to find out what their areas of interest and expertise are and what ambitions and goals they might have. I can then focus on the most applicable aspects of AFM membership to their situation.

These days it’s not uncommon for young musicians to have multiple skills from songwriting, engineering, and arranging to playing a plethora of instruments very well. Many, if not most, musicians these days are making money from numerous revenue sources, some of which are smaller than they used to be. In a constantly evolving music industry, it’s essential not to leave any potential income from your musical performances on the table. That is where the power of the paper trail works in your favor in a number of ways.

Virtually all AFM media contracts have a pension component. Pension is not something you think about much when you are young, but as someone who just turned 60, I am grateful to know that I’ll have “mailbox money” to look forward to after many years of being a working bass player. In addition, new use and re-use provisions ensure you will get paid every time your work is used in a new medium such as TV, film, and commercials.

For example, last month, a violinist named Solie Fott, a delightful man and a 70-year AFM member, came into the office to pick up a re-use check for the Patsy Cline record “Back In Baby’s Arms,” which was recorded September 10, 1962, under an AFM contract. The song was used in a Mazda commercial and he and 11 other musicians (or their beneficiaries) have received more than 10 times what the scale was when the record was made more than 53 years ago.

Without the paper trail, we would not have been able to get this payment for him. As our digital database of session information expands, it facilitates our ability to track the new uses of existing and future recordings. When you work nonunion, what you make that day is all you ever make, and you have given away your intellectual property forever. Make sure you work under an AFM contract to maximize your potential revenue streams in every way possible.