Star JonesAmina Blackwood-Meeks, Contributor
LET'S PLAY a little game of 29 questions. You know how it goes. You pick 29 arbitrary questions to ask your best friend and vice versa. The winner is the one who scores the highest or the one who gets fed up first of all the highly personal and classified information you want to dig out in de name of friendship. So we might not get very far but let's start, okay?
What is the first thing you think about when you think of your favourite foreign film star? Is it the fact that dem live in a big house? Is never seen in the same outfit twice? Travels in a private plane? All that costs money, right?
Okay. Let's say that you are planning a really important event and you want a motivational speaker, who would it be? Iyanla Vanzant? Oprah Winfrey? One of those Mr. Lee Chin could access from farin as part of the multi-million dollar assistance programme he has just offered to the Ministry of Education? See it dere again, money?
STAR JONES
You remember not so long ago a lady named Star Jones had a four-day birthday bash on our north coast dat did lead to a cass-cass over what benefits our tourism could get out of Jamaica Tourist Board having allegedly financially facilitated such a bash? And plenty people was glad dat de bashment keep so that they had a chance to get next to somebody who had the money to attract all that money?
You know what I think we love most about the people we love and love to be around? Dem have money.
Okay now. How much do we love our local artists, motivational speakers and the like? That's as an issue separate and apart from how much we say we respect the work that too and the verbal encouragement we often give them to keep on doing what you doing, Sammy.
Then why do we find it so difficult to pay them to do it?
The artistic landscape is littered with people who "didn't" or will not make it to financial success, and therefore into the hearts of many, because too many of us do not accept that what they do is work and they should be paid for it.
'OUT OF A BUDGET'
When was the last time you went to a function where the venue had to be paid for 'out of a budget', the room decorated 'out of budget', the public address system acquired 'out of a budget', tickets printed and sold, and towards the end of the event somebody announced with great panache that special acknowledgements were due to the entertainers or the guest speaker who appeared 'free of cost'?
Stop the game now if you want but tell me something, anything look odd bout dat to you? How come de budget run out, or worse, was silent on the highlight around which the event was billed? Where do you think the entertainers and motivational speakers shop for food, the clothes which sometimes people write up in columns as being 'ill-fitting and frumpy' and other such uplifting and civilised millennium compliments? How do they afford the cars we love to see our special guests arrive in? What is the value of the time they spend preparing the material, negotiating the traffic, putting aside other things to honour the occasion which did not consider their entitlement to be rewarded for the sweat of their brow? And how many times when they have named their fee do you think they have been told "Cho man, is jus a likkle ting we asking yu to do?"
I once was inspired with the perfect answer to that question. I invited the person making the request to "have it on your verandah. Invite a few friends and chit-chat." In retrospect I should also have added, "Serve the best lemonade. Pink, from foreign. You'd be amazed at what revelations come out of those verandah talks."
But me madda wudda beat me for tekking rudeness too far. I might add, we go to great expense to get these occasions just right. Not so with our performers and motivational speakers. In fact, we perhaps look forward to seeing them fall upon hard times so that we come to their rescue with special benefits, at which we ask their friends to "do a likkle ting" for free.
FREENESS MENTALITY
Do you think this could possibly be part of the freeniss mentality which creates poverty and the disrespect which pauperises the spirit?
Look here, yu tink artists do it too? Have you ever been to a function and seen anyone demanding to be let in for free? Claiming that they have paid their dues? Dat dem 'is foundation'? See de problem dere. We want to move beyond foundation. We want to put up the walls, put in the doors and windows, get some tasteful fixtures, pay JPS, NWC and any telephone and Internet service provider of choice.
We want to go to de market and not end up like de likkle piggy wid nutten. Artists must also respect the fact of the work of other artists and love them enough to defend their right to live with the dignity of people who are able to pay their bills and therefore, honestly, confidently, motivate anyone to personal and financial success holding themselves up as living examples.
The performers guilds of both the United States and the United Kingdom include motivational speakers and people who appear in commercials in the group they represent and on whose behalf they work, inter alia "to advise and assist them in obtaining employment and proper compensation".
Remember, this is work. Plus, it is seasonal and irregular. Some artists live off the earnings of one major show for the year if it flop dem suck salt.
Unless you intend to lay-wait people on payday at the bank and beg them some of their salary then you should be re-thinking the many ways in which, as a society, we hijack the earnings of, and impoverish those we are depending on to be at the core of something called "cultural industries" with the potential for national poverty alleviation and wealth creation. The choice to give away "free tickets", perform for free, let in someone at the gate, must be a choice, not a demand or an imposition. And wouldn't it be lovely if they could live in the style of their foreign counterparts we so love and respect?
