Research Report
prepared by IKS Consulting
for Pro Helvetia
November 2023
Investigating the context and impact of a short-term basic income relief fund for professional jazz musicians in South Africa (“Swiss-South African Jazz Income Relief Fund”)
“The world is too much with us; late and soon. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers (…) We have given our hearts away…”
– The World Is Too Much With Us, William Wordsworth, 1802
It is with great pleasure that we present this final report into the context of the impact of the short-term basic income relief grants for jazz musicians (The Jazz Relief Fund) administered by Pro Helvetia in South Africa.
Our research started by analysing data from a grant application management process and mapping the anonymised data of successful grant applicants. This was subsequently strengthened through a bespoke, voluntary follow-up survey. Finally, seven retrospective interviews were conducted to strengthen the longitudinal dimension of a research process that had tracked the impact of the relief fund since 2021.
The research thus presents a granular, musician-centred picture of how South African jazz players earn their income and spend it in support of their careers. It quantifies the impact of the Covid pandemic and associated restrictions on live performance and provides insight on the survival of individual musicians and other role-players in the music performance infrastructure through the lens of a relief fund.
Via musicians’ own testimonies, it illustrates how these specific Covid relief grants certainly extended careers and family survival and may also have contributed to preserving artists’ mental health and lives. Among the responses, we heard:
“It saved me from total financial ruin. I certainly would not have been able to keep my house. I honestly have no words to explain my gratitude and that of my family.”
“I was very much aware that my mental health was at stake when all of my work and scheduled tours were cancelled. The [Relief Fund] pulled through on all levels…”
Artists Featured
The findings track the importance of being able to cover the financial and opportunity costs of a music career (travel, rehearsal and practice, instrument and equipment retention, instrument upkeep and upgrade, and more) in developing – or stalling – such careers. They demonstrate that socio-economic “Long Covid” persists; musicians still struggle to cover those costs in a cultural ecosystem where not all venues and other support hubs survived the pandemic or had the capacity to pivot and play a support role in assisting artists’ resilience or career survival. Set against counterpart research from elsewhere, the findings demonstrate that South African jazz musicians’ experiences are not very different from those of their international peers and musicians outside jazz, including in the persistent and concerning underrepresentation of women.
However, in our context, relief support mechanisms were, additionally, not optimal.
The research represents a significant and novel contribution to a nascent, under-documented and only partially theorised research conversation around musician incomes and expenditure, in a research context where the focus of studies has been directed, predominantly, towards platforms, publishers, labels and other industry players.
Additionally, by suggesting both policy steps and future research directions, the research report points towards ways of sustaining and extending the beneficial impacts of grants for South African music, grant-making and cultural policy practitioners.
Andre Le Roux and
Gwen Ansell Team Leader
for the IKS Consulting Research Team
THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IKS Research Team:
- Gwen Ansell
- Monica Newton
- Thomas Windisch
Proofreading/ editing:
- Nailla Dollie
- James French
- Gwen Ansell
- Andre le Roux
Layout:
James French.
Online presentation by the Tiny Optics Team:
- Austin Le Roux
- Bevan Herold
- Nadeem Dante
Photographs supplied by Concerts SA.
The researchers would like to thank Joseph Gaylard, Germaine Gamiet and Kaz-Leigh Straightfill at Pro Helvetia for their organisation’s administration of the original grant, and their support, collaboration and valuable inputs throughout this research process. We would also like to thank all the musicians, composers and performers who gave of their time to fill in the surveys, participate in interviews, and allow us to use their knowledge, perspectives and insights for our research.
