Believe it or not, the Musicians Union (MU), representing 30,000 professionals across the UK and affiliated to the Labour Party and all left-on orgs, has never elected a female leader. Since 1893, it has been one bloke after another.
That may be about to change.
This morning, Kathy Dyson threw her hat into the ring in the contest to succeed John Smith as general secretary this summer.
Smith is retiring after 15 years of cautious moderation.
His deputy Horace Trubridge has put in for the job.
Kathy Dyson will challenge him at the ballot next month.
Kathy says: ‘I’m standing for a more feminist, inclusive and collaborative approach to working together, and for a decentralised union that fights more strongly for funding, musical work, and instrumental music education in all the regions. We need to create a long-term policy and strategy for every area of music we cover as a guide for action. We must also involve members more fully in our collective endeavour.
From her c.v.: Kathy Dyson is a jazz guitarist, composer, educator and researcher living and working in Manchester. She studied at Leeds College of Music in the early 80s, then worked throughout the UK as a jazz guitarist with husband, saxophonist John Dyson.
Let the best person win.
The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) in Wiesbaden has issued the latest statistics on musical activity.
According to the 2015 survey, some 3.1 million Germans – 38 percent of the population – make music in organised groups, such as orchestras, choirs and church groups.
There are 64,000 professional singers and musicians registered in Germany, of whom instrumental players account, remarkably, for 82%.
Across 130 public funded orchestras – there are 22 in North Rhine-Westphalia alone – there is employment for 9,900 musicians.
More signs of humanitarian shutdown. The Finns, hitherto hospitable, are restricting entry.
Among thousands of refugees that arrived in 2015 was a viola player in the Iraq National Symphony Orchestra. Members of the orchestra have been threatened for playing Western music. But the Finns have now designated Iraq a safe country and refused the player’s asylum request.
An outcry has been raised by major music groups:
In October 2016, The Finnish Migration Office (Migri) denied asylum from an Iraqi viola player. In the decision, it was accepted as a fact that in Iraq, the person in question had been threatened and assaulted because of his musicianship. Yet according to Migri, it would be safe for him to return to Iraq, if he changed his occupation. The underlying argument here was that ”a musician’s occupation is not a distinctive characteristic that is inherent, immutable or in some other way essential for a person’s conscience or realisation of human rights.”
The Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology together with the undersigned organisations and institutions object the decision. The justifications presented by Migri are not only simplified but also indifferent to both general human rights and the requirement to assess the case as individual and unique, as stipulated by the legislation of Finland….
Antti-Ville Kärjä
Chair of the Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology
Undersigned by
The Finnish Musicological Society
Music Archive JAPA
Global Music Centre
Finnish Folk Music Association
The Finnish Society for Music Education – FiSME
The Promotion Centre of Folk Music and Folk Dance
The University of Eastern Finland, Ethnomusicology
The University of Tampere, Music Research
Tampere Academic Symphony Orchestra TASO
