Good morning. I am Jean-François Denis and I am the Director of the empreintes DIGITALes record company.
Cities, regions, countries take pride in their symphony orchestras and their opera houses, which are two of the best known institutions for so-called specialized music. These institutions have their own characteristics and as such they cannot be subject to the same marketing laws as variety shows or musical comedy. The same applies to the other forms of specialized music such as electroacoustic music, current, experimental and contemporary music.
Some people think that all the different kinds of music make up one homogeneous entity because after all, every kind of music needs creators and performers. Music is experienced directly in a concert hall or through media such as records and radio. People get information about music through newspapers, music magazines and other sources. Different genres of music are practised in very different ways. These different kinds of practice give rise to the development of lines of transmission, production, promotion and distribution adapted to different kinds of music: specialized music needs specialized treatment.
Based on these solid industrial structures, variety music is now present everywhere in our society. This industry can be used as a model in many ways. In the same way as for song, the chain that connects the creator of specialized music to his fans also developed in its own way, with its specialized magazines and reviews, with its own organizations for concerts and festivals, with its own ensembles and performers, creators and composers, record companies, publishers, radio broadcasts, etc.
Just like the rest of the industry, where every link and every trade complements the others and is potentially assisted by various kinds of subsidies, the vast sector of specialized music also has its links, and each link is equally important for the other links in the chain. This is why if you suddenly withdraw support to two production links, namely sound recording and distribution, it can only destabilize the sector and it could even be catastrophic, as if one sector were asked to function with the methods of another sector. The short-, medium- and long-term impact is enormous, not only on the accessibility of the work—there will be far fewer sound recordings—but it will also impact the renown of our musicians at home and abroad and the entire musical discipline.
In fact, most kinds of so-called specialized music are taught from primary school until university, first to develop appreciation for music and to prepare future audiences, to understand its workings through study, research and analysis and, of course, to train musicians, creators and performers for tomorrow. Music is learned and developed through hearing sound recordings, all the more so because some forms of specialized music exist only on sound recordings. These recordings, these discs play several roles, such as giving access to musical works, promoting education and practical development, and constituting a national heritage to preserve audible tracks of the creativity of our musicians across the whole world.
In January 2010, my record company, empreintes DIGITALes, will celebrate its 20 years in the record publishing business. More than 110 titles—one composer per record—were produced and made available to the public at home and especially abroad. As of today, I have produced 84 records by 50 Canadian composers such as Francis Dhomont, Robert Normandeau, Paul Dolden and Gilles Gobeil, and by 32 foreign composers from France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Sweden and Argentina. Sixty-three of the 84 Canadian records received assistance, which was often modest, from the production program that the Canada Council has been running for more than 20 years. This program helps us to carry out our mission, the mission of my record company, which is to make these unique kinds of music available to the public.
How many of these 63 albums would have been made without the support of the Grants for Specialized Music Sound Recording Program? Possibly none of them because, in August 1989, without this support, setting up a record company that would help Canadian creativity flourish to this day could never have been anything more than a pipe dream.
With the music diversity program being abolished, and with production and distribution assistance programs being cut, how many aspiring musicians and new record publishers will never fulfil their potential? How many listeners and music lovers will be deprived of access to new works? Do you understand that the emerging culture of the new millennium will never be as broad, rich and diversified as the one that all of us here today have enjoyed, the one to which, at least up until now, we have all contributed in such a creative, expressive and breathtaking way?
Thank you.