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Jessye DeSilva

What We Talk About When We Talk About Equity

What We Talk About When We Talk About Equity

I haven’t had much juice for these weekly recaps lately because I was busy working on this article for the Nashville Scene, which is about the transphobic incidents at Americanafest and the AMA’s response to it. I am very grateful to Mya Byrne, Jessye DeSilva, and Paisley Fields for being open to discussing their experiences since both the events themselves and the media brou-ha-ha surrounding it were all very upsetting. Most importantly, my editor at the Scene, Stephen Traegeser, graciously allowed for the dust to settle for a few weeks until they felt ready to comment on it — and for the Americana Music Association to assemble some kind of statement.

If you haven’t read the article yet, it’s very obvious that AMA does not see itself as having the same responsibilities that artists wish they would take on: resource sharing, artist advocacy, a willingness to understand how the organization’s structure contributes to bias and tokenism (as does any institution in America — let’s be real.) For an organization that emphasized its willingness to “listen” and “have dialogue,” they sure weren’t interested in actually speaking with me for this article!

I think what’s interesting here is that when I asked AMA’s publicist what the DEI Committee was up to, AMA pointed to an increase in diversity in conference programming, the wide diversity of award recipients, and a partnership with the Smithsonian. Oh, and a bunch of people saw their #AllAmericana campaign on Instagram — over a million impressions!

What they did not discuss were any internal trainings within the organization, accountability measures, equity measures for artists (such as the grants and scholarships they now say they’ll produce), partnerships with the beautifully diverse city of Nashville, or an anti-harassment policy.

When we compare AMA to Folk Alliance International, the disparities are pretty stark. FAI has hosted town halls and focus groups with their artist members, and you can’t go too far on their website without stumbling across some kind of commitment to diversity. They even share resources for other organizations to begin their own process.

Interestingly, one of the members of AMA’s DEI committee is also a member of FAI’s.

Events

We finally have some events to post!

Artist Resources

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