Lafayette was left for dead in the mid-1980s. The oil industry collapsed, and we turned to music to dig us out of the funk. The era when folks went from believing to “be leaving” Lafayette also saw the birth of Festival International and Downtown Alive!
Now, it’s Lafayette’s music industry that could use a jumpstart.
Local venues are losing audiences, musicians are losing gigs — and everyone is losing money. Charting a path out is the idea behind the Lafayette Music Census and related ecosystem strategy, spearheaded by Lafayette Consolidated Government, Lafayette Travel, LEDA, and two dozen local partners from the public and private sectors.
Playing in a band is a traditional side-hustle in Lafayette for weekend warriors and pros alike, and the income from it can be meaningful. Musicians surveyed by the music census report earning an average of $23,000 a year, most of it coming from local gigs.
But musicians say their pay is too low, while venue owners say they can’t afford yesteryear’s guarantees. Everyone says the cost of living is too high. No doubt about it, it’s a difficult time to be in live music.
The problem isn’t unique to Lafayette, says Sami Parbhoo, named LCG’s music liaison this year after spearheading the census.
Live music scenes across the U.S. are suffering, and trend lines point to Covid and an emerging generation less interested in going out to drink and listening to amplified music.
“Covid had a very big effect on our habits,” says Parbhoo. “Now what is going to happen? Are the next younger generations going to go back to going out more? Or is this the new reality?”
A new reality would call for a new bag of tricks. For Lafayette that means diversifying its music scene’s economic portfolio. There may well be lots of musicians, but Lafayette has not built a broader musical infrastructure.
Even seasoned performers have scant access to publicists, agents, publishers and other industry types. But Scott Durbin, a UL music business professor, believes untapped opportunities remain for local musicians in licensing their music or learning to climb the remaining rungs of the record industry ladder.
Durbin’s got the experience himself. Twenty years ago, he and some neighbors formed the Imagination Movers and parlayed a brand of playful, approachable kids music into a Disney television series.
Today, his students are learning the ropes — and alphabet soup — of music licensing. At one of the music census roundtables, Durbin observed that there’s plenty of untapped potential in the great Acadiana songbook. But very few local songwriters understand how to copyright and sell their songs to be featured in movies, TV, video games or otherwise be used by the entertainment industry.
Sync licensing is just one stone left unturned, he says, arguing for a more expansive view of what could be. What he’s after is an anchor that the ecosystem could build around and that in turn could spin other opportunities into action.
“It could be a label, a music library, additional venues, [and so on],” Durbin says. “I don’t see why a boutique label couldn’t be that business, and consequently a spark.”
To some extent, those industry linchpins are in their own states of decline.
Over the years, musical entrepreneurs in Lafayette have stood up labels, festivals, venues and entertainment enterprises, looking to take advantage of the stray bits of Hollywood that landed here from Louisiana’s system of entertainment tax credits.
Still, despite the investment, Louisiana has not emerged as a major center for entertainment. Bigger cities with established industry, like Austin or Nashville, have an edge there, Durbin concedes, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be replicated here.
“Our size does work against us for sure, but we are one of the only cities in the state that is growing in population and we have a musical identity,” Durbin says. “Let’s say that continues — we do have knowledgeable and hungry individuals coming out of our program every year, but most have to leave to find sustainable work. What if that changes? What would change that?”
Answering that question is at the heart of the census and its report. With data in hand, however limited, the goal from here is to chart a new path.
“There’s no one thing that’s going to solve all this,” says Parbhoo. “It is a lot larger than even Lafayette, but as a community, there’s hope.”