Block-By-Block: Breaking Down Baltimore’s Unique Music Scene
Background
Since January, my classmates in Berklee’s Global Entertainment & Music Business program and I have explored the impact of native cultures on music creation and consumption. Through this course on Global Distribution & Emerging Markets, we were treated to a visit from Sound Diplomacy Founder and CEO Shain Shapiro, who spoke to us about smart state music policy and the value of art and culture as an economic driver and force multiplier. With these thoughts in mind, we began our final project, a music city analysis of our respective hometowns. Over the past several weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to learn from local musicians, professors, and cultural association representatives in order to depict Baltimore’s musical ecosystem and craft a plan for its development.
Note: A great deal of this research was conducted through local publications, including The Baltimore Sun and Baltimore Magazine, so some resources may be unavailable outside of the U.S. or without a VPN. If you have the means, please consider supporting these outlets and local media in your own area who make projects like this possible.
Historical Evolution
Baltimore was established by the British in 1729 as a port city, and its role as a key immigration and trade point evolved throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. As the United States industrialized, Baltimore quickly became an intellectual center, establishing the nation’s first railroad line, telegraph line, post office system, research university and publishing companies. The city continued to expand its size and influence until a terrible fire wiped out much of its business district in the early 1900’s. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Baltimore developed further and retrofitted its factories during both World Wars. By the 1950’s, however, Baltimore entered a period of contraction as the local government invested in suburbanization and core industries shifted from shipping and fishing towards advanced manufacturing, medicine, and finance.
In recent years, Baltimore’s reputation has ebbed and flowed as it poured money into schooling and social programs, only to see many of its core issues persist. The main ongoing problems include Baltimore’s high violent crime rate, which has spiked since Freddie Gray’s murder and ensuing riots in 2015, poor public education system, and dangerous mix of rampant poverty, prohibitively high taxes, and deep-rooted socioeconomic disparity. Today, the city is home to roughly 600,000 residents, and holds upwards of 2.8 million more in the surrounding metropolitan area. With a median age around 35, a bit lower than the national average, and private sector economic output close to $37 billion annually, the city appears to be positioned for a period of sustained expansion. The most exciting prospects for Baltimore’s growth, however, emerge once we dig into its music scene.
Inside Baltimore’s Music Scene
By The Numbers
In the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts’ most recent study in 2016, they estimated the city’s non-profit arts and culture sector to be worth approximately $606 million. This industry supports roughly 15,000 full-time jobs and generates upwards up $55 million in annual local and state revenues. By no means a hub like New York or Los Angeles, or even a micro-hub such as Chicago, Atlanta, or Miami, Baltimore punches above its weight as a music city, driven by its live sector and highly effective cultural office.
National Export and Local Staples
Jazz: Baltimore is historically known as a jazz city, having spurred legends including Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, Chick Webb, and Eubie Blake. This thread of history is also a major component of the city’s music tourism sector, featuring the Eubie Blake Cultural Center. More recently, Baltimore’s jazz scene has expanded to a wide variety of venues across the city, with a number a notable players lauded for their versatility and avant guard approaches. Key groups like the Baltimore Jazz Collective and the newly reestablished Keystone Korner have led the way for this movement as well.
Indie/Alternative: Baltimore has been particularly successful nationally exporting indie and alternative talent from its suburbs, fueled largely by areas like Catonsville and Ellicott City. Acts such as Wye Oak, All Time Low, and Future Islands have all gained national notoriety, while emerging acts Amy Reid and Us and Us Only highlight the local scene’s diversity.
Hip Hop/Rap: Artists like Sisqó and Dru Hill led the way in the 80’s and 90’s, but Baltimore’s underground scene has since taken on a new life. Now, a new wave of artists, including Riplay, Lor Choc, Al Rogers Jr., are pulling from a broader range of influences and further blurring genre boundaries.
Electronic/Club: The intermingling between Baltimore’s hip hop and club scenes has always been palpable. Legends like Miss Tony and Scottie B. laid the groundwork for a new wave of creators, namely :3LON, Blaqstarr, K-Swift, and TT The Artist. In the local scene, artists like Dan Deacon and Abdu Ali have become community leaders, hosting block parties and showcases.
Top Upcoming Artists: Pitchfork’s recently released article on the Top 200 Albums of the 2010’s featured three local acts, Beach House’s Teen Dream (2010), JPEGMAFIA’s Veteran (2018), and Snail Mail’s Lush (2018). This showing demonstrates that Baltimore can contend with any other major music city in terms of the caliber of its artists and their projects.
Regardless of genre, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, the culture of Baltimore indelibly marks its creators and the art that they produce.
Recording, Live, and Professional Services
Recording: Looking at record labels and recording studios, there is a strong indie scene in Baltimore. Local musicians acknowledge that there is no shortage of experienced engineers for studio sessions and live performances. A number of Baltimore’s more upscale studios, namely Wright Way Studios, Heartwood Sound Studios, and The Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts attract national talent in addition to local business. A strong DIY culture permeates all facets of the city’s music scene, and some smaller studios are feeling this pressure as they are forced to close due to decreasing demand for traditional recording spaces.
Live: Baltimore’s live scene, up until recently, served as the cornerstone and key revenue generator for the local music industry. The city hosts a variety of festivals each year, and even those that focus on topics outside of music, such as film, food, or visual/performance art, typically involve local musicians as well. Baltimore has several large venues for national acts nearby, including Royal Farms Arena, MECU Pavilion, Merriweather Post Pavilion, and multiple sports stadiums. There are a range of medium-sized venues as well, which include Power Plant Live!, Baltimore Soundstage, and six additional theaters. This gives the city a great deal of flexibility around the musicians and cultural offerings they can bring to town. Where Baltimore’s music scene truly thrives, however, is in the small venues. These venues are typically oriented towards a specific scene, but maintain the same flexibility and open-mindedness as the rest of the city. Audiences can visit Caton Castle, an historic jazz club, The Crown, which offers a window into Baltimore’s club scene, and Ottobar, typically a rock/alternative scene ranked as a top ten venue in the nation by Rolling Stone in 2018. In downtown neighborhoods, many restaurants and bars hire local musicians on the weekends as well.
Professional Services: As is the case with all other U.S. music cities, artists from Baltimore are protected by federal copyright legislation and can procure services from national performance rights organizations. When looking at local industry-specific resources, however, Baltimore’s DIY spirit starts to show. A cursory search revealed that the three primary types of music work in Baltimore are educational, religious, and sporadic engineering gigs. If Baltimore artists are in search of music industry managers, booking agents, lawyers, accountants, or other specialized professional services, they may be better off looking to larger hubs. From a live promotion standpoint, Live Nation works with a number of medium/large venues, while regional giant I.M.P. handles nearly every other medium/large venue between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
One other bight spot for Baltimore’s professional services is its proximity to the PRS Guitars headquarters in nearby Stevensville, MD. PRS is a high-end instrument brand that carries signature lines for artists including John Mayer, Carlos Santana, and Rush’s Alex Lifeson. I’ve been fortunate to witness this company’s community engagement firsthand, having attended their annual factory open house and numerous fundraiser-performances in the city, cosponsored with Johns Hopkins’ Kimmel Cancer Center.
State Music Policy
Governance: There are few dimensions of music-specific governance for the city to worry about, as the majority of legal and intellectual property concerns are handled at the federal level. One key area that directly affects the city’s artists and audiences, however, is noise ordinances. Since Maryland’s Department of the Environment transferred noise enforcement authority back to local jurisdictions, Baltimore has run a fairly tight ship. The city updated its code in 2015 to define “A loud and unruly party,” expand the scope of persons responsible, and raise financial penalties. These ordinances have had minimal impact on the arts & entertainment districts, but have led local authorities to break up smaller private events.
Cultural Associations: One of the brightest spots and catalysts for Baltimore’s cultural reinvigoration has been the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts (BOPA). This office is responsible for a wide range of initiatives across the city, which include planning over fifteen annual festivals, engaging artists in educational and public works projects, and overseeing several key landmarks and galleries. BOPA also supports artists financially, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 downturn. The association operates a grant program, offering small sums for events or creative projects, as well as an emergency relief fund, and even facilitates brand sponsorships. BOPA also manages the city’s film office and awards a variety of annual prizes to students and professionals.
Other Cultural Considerations
Baltimore enjoys many trappings of a major metropolitan area, including three art museums, professional baseball and American football teams, a horse race in the historic Triple Crown, and multiple arts & entertainment districts. The city also sports several history museums, with a particular emphasis on African-American culture, as well as a symphony orchestra, and numerous other gastronomic experiences and tourist attractions. Strong nightlife and tourism allow local music to serve as an even greater economic force multiplier.
Key Strengths & Weaknesses
Major Weaknesses
Socioeconomic Inequality: One of the most troubling prospects for the city of Baltimore’s development as a whole is the rampant, historic inequality in income, poverty, and unemployment rates between black and white people. The figures below clearly demonstrate pockets of wealthy whites in North Baltimore directly juxtaposed with disproportionately lower income and higher unemployment levels in the surrounding areas. Some argue that Baltimore’s socioeconomic disparity actually closely mirrors that of similarly impoverished cities. However, that does not account for the fundamental inequality in the urban planning of the city’s transportation infrastructure. These three metro lines remain almost entirely disconnected to this day, with one line running northward into the wealthier white areas, one line running northwest through the poorer areas, and the final line running southwest to Washington, D.C. These disconnects at a basic level of human need stand as a barrier to all types of social progress for the city.
Brain Drain: Baltimore’s proximity to Washington, D.C. (30–40 minutes southwest) and New York City (3–4 hours north) serves as both a blessing and curse. The access to creative and professional resources, as well as occasional gigs, is a tremendous asset to individual artists. However, for the community as a whole, the brain drain that ensues from artists leaving the local scene and transplanting to larger regional, national, or international hubs can cripple the momentum of niche cultural movements.
Music Business Infrastructure: One additional consideration that was partially addressed in the ‘Professional Services’ section above and significantly contributes to the aforementioned brain drain is Baltimore’s lack of music-specific industry professionals. When an artist gaining sizable traction in Baltimore finds themself in need of a manager, the chances are that most capable or experienced managers have already moved to these larger hubs to gain a greater return on their investments. Services such as lawyers, accountants, and even booking agents are easier to employ remotely, but Baltimore’s lack of a specialized music business resources make scaling and exporting talent locally that much more difficult.
Key Strengths
Dynamic/Open-Minded Scene: The attribute of Baltimore’s music scene that contributes the most to its success and proves hardest to measure is the unique dynamic between artist and audience. This mindset is perfectly encapsulated by M.C. Schmidt, one-half of the electronic duo Matmos, in his 2016 interview with Baltimore Magazine.
In places like New York or San Francisco, there are a lot of folded arms. Like, is this really cool enough? There’s very little of that in Baltimore. They’re like, I don’t care if it’s ‘cool enough.’ I’m deciding for myself. And I came here to enjoy myself or be illuminated so I’m going to give things a benefit of the doubt, which is a very fertile ground to be an artist in.
M.C. Schmidt, Matmos
This level of encouragement to fully and authentically express oneself makes the scene an excellent proving ground for all types of artists.
Cost of Living/Creative Resources: Acting as a converse argument to the previous section on brain drain, Baltimore residents benefit from a relatively low cost of living compared to their neighbors in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. In this basic cost of living calculator, Baltimore has cheaper monthly expenses than New York City by $1,900, Washington, D.C. by $1,000, Los Angeles by $800, and Philadelphia by $225. Pair these numbers with the saturation of New York’s jazz and hip hop scenes and the growing ease of digital self-promotion, along with expanding grants and opportunities offered by BOPA, and its no wonder why artists are increasingly enticed to stay local.
Higher Education Backbone: Though Baltimore’s public schooling system still lags behind national averages in a number of key metrics, the local higher education network has tremendously benefitted the music scene. One recent report estimates that Baltimore city’s eight four-year institutions enroll nearly 60,000 students at any given time. Additionally, Johns Hopkins’ Peabody Institute, Goucher College, and Towson University in nearby Baltimore County are widely known for their excellent jazz programs. This asset to the music scene helps counteract the historically problematic brain drain while developing and integrating emerging talent.
Development Plan
For all intents and purposes, Baltimore is an extremely effective music city. The scene is as diverse as it is experimental and open-minded, and the local cultural association engages many different facets of the community in meaningful projects and large-scale events. In the spirit of continuous improvement, however, I’ve put together a three-pronged development plan to target some of the city’s most glaring fundamental disconnects.
Integration of Music/Culture in Social Welfare Programs
Baltimore has implemented some of the most diverse and comprehensive welfare programs in the United States, with support options across food, healthcare, energy, housing, and more. Several large, private non-profits also offer broad-spanning assistance for populations grappling with poverty or homelessness. These initiatives have proven effective at supporting Baltimore’s least fortunate in the immediate term, but treating the symptoms of a broken system limits their ability to address its root causes.
One interesting way to promote sustainability, independence, and holistic wellbeing for Baltimore’s impoverished communities is through the integration of music and cultural education in these welfare programs. A plethora of research exists around the cognitive, social, and educational benefits of introducing children to music at an early age. Meaningful music programs are driven by a variety of factors, but could benefit from piggybacking on the infrastructure established by existing welfare programs. This added dimension of support would lay the groundwork for Baltimore’s next generation to develop creatively and raise themselves up.
Urban Housing and Community Development
A recent report found that Baltimore contains over 16,000 vacant homes, lots and buildings, a number which has barely dropped in the past decade. With a new affordable housing fund approved by voters in 2016, city officials have laid out a preliminary framework for coordinated urban development over the next decade. With Baltimore focusing its efforts on expanding community resources, promoting access and equity, and investing across all neighborhoods, this stands as the perfect opportunity to reintegrate music at the bedrock of these communities. The framework offers $55 million in funding for public spaces as well as annual grants for private programs, which opens new possibilities for entrepreneurs, creatives, and community leaders alike. By investing in spaces for rehearsal, recording, performance, and education, Baltimore’s Department of Housing can achieve their central goal of mixing public and market-priced housing in cohesive neighborhoods.
Centralize Policy Power, Empower Community Leaders
One key limiting factor of the city’s recent progress has been high turnover and low efficacy in the local government. Of the city’s previous three mayors, two resigned in the wake of personal scandals and another declined to seek reelection amid mass rioting and violent crime. Though the new mayor, Bernard Young, seems poised to change this trend, the local music scene stands to benefit from consistent policy representation across the board. Of the twelve current mayoral offices, the only to address any form of arts, entertainment, or culture is the Office of Cable and Communications’ CharmTV campaign. On the other side of this equation, BOPA’s board of directors is comprised of thirteen business owners and community representatives, none of whom cover the policy side. By integrating the mayor’s office with BOPA’s board of directors, both groups could leverage resources such as BOPA’s Creative Census and the mayor’s CitiStat tool to benchmark development efforts, draft smart city music policies, and foster cultural inclusivity.
At the opposite end of this spectrum, we have seen community leaders build grassroots movements around social programs and on social media. Local artists like Dan Deacon have also composed for and performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. By centralizing the policy and decision-making authority between the mayor’s office and BOPA, we could see a variety of local artistic leaders and community organizers empowered by additional resources, greater exposure, and new collaborators.
Conclusions
Diving deep into Baltimore’s cultural ecosystem has filled me with immense pride for my hometown. Over eighteen years, this city shaped many of my sensibilities, habits, and values, musically and otherwise, and I relish the opportunity to give something back to the community that brought me up. Though there’s still a great deal of work to be done, learning about the cultural niches, deep-rooted struggles, and plethora of opportunities makes me more optimistic than ever for Baltimore’s future.
Thank You!
I’d like to thank my professor and mentor, Pete Dyson, for guiding us through this project and continuously offering up new nuggets of cultural capital. Shain Shapiro, for enhancing our perspective with real world examples and helping us appreciate the complexity of these distinct ecosystems. Michael Kuhl, for pulling back the curtain on Baltimore’s live scene from the gigging musician’s viewpoint. And you, for making it to the bottom!
