The issue has come up on numerous occasions in the past and will no doubt continue to do so until some action is taken to address it.
In an effort to revive the industry in Grand Bahama, Fox and a group of entertainers met last week to launch the Grand Bahama Entertainment, Musicians and Artists Association (GBEMAA), and as a result of that initial meeting, 70 members signed up.
Fox estimates that there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 250 entertainers in Grand Bahama who cannot find work, and in New Providence ﾗ with a considerably larger population ﾗit is safe to assume that the number is much higher.
That there is a perceived need in Grand Bahama for the formation of an umbrella group to look out for the welfare of entertainers on that island raises the question as to whether the long-established Bahamas Musicians Union (BMU) has been doing an effective job in this regard. The BMU is supposed to be the union for all entertainers in the country, so there really should be no need for a separate organization in Grand Bahama to duplicate what BMU is mandated to do.
Are the 70 members who have already signed up with GBEMAA also members of the BMU? If they are, then why are they not addressing their concerns through the BMU? The fact is that the high unemployment rate among entertainers in this country has very little to do with lack of proper representation by BMU.
To be sure, the very nature of the entertainment industry is such that those involved in it are not minimum-wage-type employees. Entertainers generally command salaries on a much higher scale, and although The Bahamas is one of the top tourist destinations in this region, there are not that many venues in the country that can afford to pay the kind of money local entertainers sometimes demand. For example, a four-member group easily would expected to be compensated around $2000 per week, but there are few local establishments that can afford to include that amount in their overhead when they could just as easily, and for considerably less, have a DJ provide entertainment with CDs.
What's more, with the exception of all-inclusive hotels like Sandals and Breezes, which stage nightly shows with a full complement of contracted entertainers, most of the hotels in The Bahamas do not feature live bands.
And long gone are the days when there was a number of excellent night clubs Over-The-Hill that featured live entertainment, with the Cat and Fiddle and Peanuts Taylor's Drumbeat being popular entertainment havens for tourists.
When you add to this the proclivity of Bahamians to not fully appreciate the excellent performing talent that exists in this country in the same manner that they do foreign entertainers, then the enormity of the problem facing Bahamian entertainers comes into sharp focus.
Foreign is better seems to be ingrained in the thinking of some Bahamians. To them reggae, rap and American pop are superior to Bahamians music, despite the fact that legendary entertainers like Ronnie Butler and relatively newcomers like KB and Funky D have repeatedly demonstrated otherwise. Yet a show featuring the combined talent of these sensational Bahamian entertainers would not get the kind of support from Bahamians that a reggae singer brought in from Jamaica would get.
We suspect that the GBEMAA will soon discover, as the BMU more likely than not did many years ago, that there are no easy solutions to the lack of employment problems being encountered by Bahamian entertainers.
The Nassau Guardian
