NW Folklife threatens street performers (Seattle)

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 06:02 PM

I don't have time right now to say much here, but it's not that simple, leeneia.

I used to participate in the Northwest Folklife Festivals, but rarely any more and only under certain circumstances. The nature of the thing has changed within the past few years. No matter what their web site says, it has become Big Business, with little real understanding of what folk music is all about.

And, no, they don't pay any of the thousands of scheduled performers. It's become a bloody mob scene, and the powers-that-be don't seem to have any standards when it comes to what "folklife" means. Apparently, it's anything that "folks" do, including garage rock bands using the festival to showcase themselves. Anything resembling traditional folk music is generally crammed up into the meeting rooms in the northwest corner.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: Deckman
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 05:50 PM

"To take advantage of all the crowds" ... that's the kind of mindset that has warped this festival. This festival deserves itself. Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 05:13 PM

"Our organization is a small nonprofit that relies heavily on donations from Festival-goers to keep this event going each year. We ask that you donate a portion of your proceeds to Northwest Folklife."

Sounds fair to me. The committee probably works all year, and at least some of the members will be unpaid.

Why should they do all the work and take the risks, only to have strangers pop up at the last minute to take advantage of the crowd? Why should they work to provide free music, then let outsiders move in and stick their their hands out?

The rules seem fair to me, as well. Not too close to other bands, no blocking of traffic, not too loud. No fires.

Reggie, I think your friend needs to accept a little 'give and take' here.

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: open mike
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 03:52 PM

sorry to hear this sad state of affairs.
i think that the Turkey Pluckers enjoyed
a reunion concert there a few years back
the folk life folks should support folk
music, after all isn't that what it is
about??!! You should be featured on one
of the stages, and paid to perform there.

i thought that the free admission to the
event was possible due to sponsors and
other contributors footing the bill for
the performers...are you saying that no
one gets paid to play there? that stinks.

does the folk life organization pay for
the use of the park for the day (weekend)?

they do not pay performers, and they deny
them (you) the chance of collecting donations
for your efforts...?? something wrong here....

do the musicians need a union to represent them
(us)? try local 1000,http://local1000.com/

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: meself
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 01:58 PM

Sorry, Reggie, I didn't mean to sound like I was questioning your integrity; I just wanted to make it clear that my reaction was based solely on your account of the situation, just to cover myself, because, you will note, I used fairly strong language in my interpretation of what seems to be happening.

Btw, I stopped busking at the Fringe Festival in Edmonton some years back for similar reasons - although it hadn't occurred to the organizers to tattle-tale to Revenue Canada on buskers.

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: Deckman
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 01:33 PM

My respect for Reggie Miles knows no bounds. He is a superb musician and an even better person. At first when I saw this thread, I was just going to sit back and shut up. But now I feel compelled to comment:

I performed in the first 20 or more folklife festivals. At first, it was just plain fun: family oriented, music and musician oriented, and it was one of the annual events we all anticpated with relish. With the advent of "professional festival managers", the yardstick of success became the "numbers" of the crowd. It was then that the focus shifted from good, family oriented music and fun, to issues of crowd controll and making money anyway possible.

I personally have "given up" on just about every activity in Seattle, save personal contact with many friends who are unfortunate enough to still live there. The issue that Reggie is reporting is very reflective of the present day nazi/thug mentality I see in many areas of Seattle.

I find this very sad ... I grew up in south Seattle when it was a good place. I can't help but wonder what Ivar Hauglund would say today! Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: reggie miles
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 01:28 PM

"assuming Reggie Miles is giving an accurate report"

meself, I have no reason to invent the truth about this matter. If you'd like, I'll send you the email address and website of my friend who withdrew from the event and you can have a chat with him about it. He and his friends sing in a traditional gospel music vocal group.

artbrooks, the only control that's needed in this instance, is control of those who deem themselves above the law of the land. They are the ones denying folks their right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Or perhaps you'd rather live in a country where just anyone with the position of event coordinator/producer/manager can come along and deny you, me and everyone else that they see fit, to the precious freedoms that so many in this country have fought and died to protect. I, for one, don't believe that they should be granted that kind of authority. If they're so power hungry that they want to resort to the kind of tactics, they should host the event on private property and not in a public park.

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: meself
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 12:02 PM

I can see where there might be a need in an event such as this for some control, but when it reaches the point where - assuming Reggie Miles is giving an accurate report - the organizers resort to extortion and snitching - well, what can you say ....

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: artbrooks
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 11:39 AM

Well, we will be at Folklife this year, enjoying the scheduled performers - who are already so close together that the music from one venue can be heard at others - and trying to get through on the already crowded walkways where buskers and others are impeding progress. Perhaps there is a good reason for trying to control the number of additional people creating their own stages. The sidewalkj north of Centerhouse? Fagetaboutit!

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: reggie miles
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 11:02 AM

Wonder no more, NW Folklife's IRS threat against street performers is a new low blow for the event organizers of this "folk" event. When you're so desperate for cash to run your event that you have to start demanding %15 and assorted other fees from street performers (essentially robbing from the poor) you've already lost and should just step down from calling yourself an event coordinator/producer/organizer and throw in the towel. If your goal is to be a thief, these (four letter words deleted) should go get a job on Wall Street, where robbing from the rich and poor alike is sanctioned and supported.

Street performing, as a folk art, is the one of oldest forms of entertainment known to man. It is perhaps the original form of entertainment. It has existed for thousands of years, far longer than most of the forms of music and art that we support as "folk" today. To treat this honorable means of exchange between humans as something to be scorned and treated as "less than" corporate controlled folk arts is criminal. It's bureaucracy run amuck!

What next? Is NW Folklife going to start robbing the panhandlers too and reporting them to the IRS if they don't comply with their demands?

Subject: RE: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Apr 10 - 01:24 AM

Weird. A girl who went to my church, who was 10 at the time, took her fiddle and stood under a tree with her case open and played. This would be about 10 years ago, I think (she's about 20 now -- geezis how time flies). I wonder if they've gotten narstier in the interim. Or maybe they just don't harass little girls.

Subject: NW Folklife threatens street performers
From: reggie miles
Date: 29 Apr 10 - 06:12 PM

I surprised to get a phone call from a friend and fellow street performer the other day. He was dismayed by some news that he had learned about playing at the NW Folklife Festival this year.

This year, he was scheduled to perform at the event. He was excited about that. Like me, he gets invitations to play at events and he had been looking forward to this opportunity. He was going to organize a group performance with some other friends for this year's event.

He told me that while at the festival he was also planning to perform for donations with his friends. While talking with the folks at NW Folklife he learned that they had adopted a new tactic this year to crack down on street performers. He said that they were going to report street performers to the IRS who did not comply with their list of demands.

Upon hearing this news, he told the organizers that he and his friends weren't interested in performing this year. I was as surprised as he was to hear about this new tool in their anti-street performing arsenal. Their list of rules is long, restricting those who engage in this First Amendment protected activity and copied almost to the letter from a similar list that was being used to restrict street performers by those managing the Seattle Center.

A street performer challenged the Seattle Center's rules and won his case against the Seattle Center and the City of Seattle in June of 2009, just two weeks after I was bounced from the event. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard the case with 11 judges and in an 8 to 3 decision, they invalidated five specific rules. The Court said that the City of Seattle could not:

1. require the application for permits to perform on public property
2. ask performers to display a permit for entertaining on public property
3. tell performers where they could perform on public property
4. tell performer how close they could be to any gathered group of people
5. restrict what performers could say to their audiences

In short, what I do on public property as a street performer, is protected by the First Amendment as freedon of expression. At the following link, you can Read the Court's ruling.

It was number 3 on the above list that the NW Folklife head of security used to harass me, while I was entertaining folks at the event. At last year's NW Folklife event I was forcibly evicted from the grounds of the Seattle Center by four officers of the SPD (Seattle Police Department) because I stood up to being bullied by the festival's head of security. (I told him that the only problem I saw was him.) What had I done wrong? I choose to sit in the shade of a covered walkway at the far northern edge of the event and entertain about a dozen folks (at their request) offering folk music with my folk instruments at this "supposed" folk music event.

The NW Folklife Festival is a free event, held on public property, the Seattle Center. The Seattle Center is a public park. According to the Court's decision on the matter, that makes my activities as a street performer beyond the forced control of the rules of the festival.

NW Folklife specifically demands that they have the right tell performers where they can and cannot perform, how close performers can be to a gathered group of folks at the event. Plus, they wish to collect a tax of %15 of anything that listeners might freely offer to street performers as support. They require street performers to pay a $10 fee for the right to exercise their First Amendment right to freedom of expression on the ground of the Seattle Center, a public park. Finally they require street performers to get a temporary business license, a $20 fee.

Here's the link to their rules.

http://www.nwfolklife.org/get-involved/street-performers

See for your self.

NW Folklife has not paid a single performer for their skills and talents to entertain at this event in the last 3 decades since I've been donating my time there. Now, they not only wish to deny the right to freedom of expression, but they want to street performers to pay for that right. Rights are not privileges to be controlled by power hungry event coordinators and they have no right treating our rights in that manner!

To my friends on the other side of the pond, suffering from the hands of those termed fascists. Know that we too, here in the land of the "free", do suffer from creative oppression as well, from those who I would also term as having a mentality that's not far from fascist.