Introduction
Academic, government, and community studies of New Orleans’ ‘cultural economy’ have surged in recent decades. But, musicians’ pay remains somewhat a ‘black box’; a largely unregulated, partly-cash, hugely varied patchwork of gigs that may or may not add up to a living wage. I wanted to better understand the local cultural economy, and I focused on one particular element: the Frenchmen Street music venue cluster, a unique geographical, musical, and economic phenomenon. Over the last year I have counted what is quantifiable while interviewing cultural practitioners and found that Frenchmen is a pillar in the livelihoods of many New Orleans musicians. It serves as a microcosm for the cultural economy, while at the same time stands out as distinctive, which provides insights on how cultural hot-spots grow.
Background
“Frenchmen Street” is a cluster of music-hosting bars and restaurants, right next to the French Quarter. The first venue, The Dream Palace, opened in 1976, and over the next decades more venues arose, growing into a hot-spot for music. In the 1990s, legal tensions with City started because the surrounding neighborhood is not zoned for live music. In 2004 an ‘Arts and Culture Zoning Overlay’ was passed, marking out the half-dozen block faces on Esplanade, Decatur and Frenchmen streets which gave it legal validity. But issues persist to this day, including sound levels, contention over shared space, legally allowable activity, traffic/pedestrian flow, artistic integrity vs. economic value, etc.
The ethnographic, historical, economic, and legal stories of Frenchmen have only been documented in fragments. (Bourbon Street, arguably the most infamous street in New Orleans, only recently had its history laid out in Richard Campanella’s 2014 book. It is no surprise that its ‘little sister’ music street is less well documented.) This piece will be followed by several other phases, including a timeline of significant events on Frenchmen and other economic analysis.
Ethnographic methods, sensitivity, and the difficulty of quantifying the cultural economy
I was mindful that talking about money is a deeply-rooted American taboo, and it becomes even more fraught in a cash economy system. I am grateful to my 16 interviewees for their trust and candor. Interview subjects ranged in age from 27 to 60+, representing a range of gender and racial identities, and a mix of New Orleans natives and transplants, bandleaders and ‘sidemen’. They started playing on Frenchmen between 1997 and 2015, and play a range of instruments and genres. I was also sensitive to the possibility of venues seeming vilified; discussions around musicians’ pay can be oversimplified to ‘venues need to pay more,’ and anger around this can be quick to surface. I included interviews with several people who work in Frenchmen venues to help shed light on the complex economic picture.
How Frenchmen fits into the cultural economy
Frenchmen is a dense 2.5- block ecosystem. Historically, it stood in sharp contrast to Bourbon Street: it was where locals went to hang out, and where musicians played original music in a variety of genres. Interviewees described Frenchmen as “bread-and-butter” work, “steady”, ”where you clock in and out”. Frenchmen gigs comprise a third to three-quarters of interviewees’ total, although for a few, Frenchmen gigs are nearly 100% of their work. And many stated that if they are playing elsewhere, it will often either be for far more money (e.g. a festival or private gig), or far less money (a ‘passion project’).
Frenchmen has changed rapidly, but over the last year it has had about 15 operative venues, hosting roughly 1,000 gigs every month, played by 300+ bands– up to 5 gigs per day per venue. Individual musicians report playing from four to 22 gigs per month on Frenchmen. I did not try to pin down the number of musicians, because so many musicians play with multiple bands (up to a dozen through the year). Many bands play weekly gigs, providing a reliable source of income– venues like Cafe Negril and the Apple Barrel average 3.5 to 4 gigs a month per band, i.e. mostly the same bands week to week. Other venues have more variety, like 30*90, where bands average around 1.5 gigs per month. Bands generally play for three/four hours at a time, and earn a percentage of the money the bar takes in, as well as tips from the audience. Cover charges are limited to a few special days a year, because with a few exceptions most Frenchmen businesses are in legal categories that prohibit them (like “Full Service Restaurant).
There is a general agreement among the community that Frenchmen has ‘Bourbonized’ since Hurricane Katrina, but the definition varies among individuals. Common elements include more tourists and fewer locals patronizing the street, the uptick in covers of well-known songs being played vs. original music, newer businesses bringing a different character to the ecosystem, and a hard-to-put-into-words difference in how it “feels”.
Economic Picture: Venues and Tipping
Musicians make money via payment from the venues, soliciting tips, and sales of CDs and other merchandise. There was a strong level of consistency among interviewees that $100 for a gig on Frenchmen is the baseline of what is considered realistically a ‘decent’ gig. Some musicians set that bar a little lower (particularly on a weeknight when there’s less opportunity cost for missing other gigs) and some somewhat higher, but the $100 figure was mentioned in almost every interview. This may be because it’s a round number, or it may reflect generation-old levels of pay set by the Musicians’ Union, although most of my interviewees are not Union members.
Leaving aside the ‘regular’ nights/afternoons where a musician makes their expected $80 or $100 or $130, Frenchmen has an astonishing range of pay. There are legendary ‘best gigs ever’, where each band member made $400, $600, or even close to $1,000. These seem to be based on a combination of a low number of people in the band, a high-traffic night, and strong tip-soliciting. On the other side, everyone had a story of dismal economics, making $19 or $37 per person, netting only a single dollar in tips per band member, or making $52 but getting a $40 ticket for using a loading zone to move music gear.
This highlights one of the pitfalls for musicians on Frenchmen (and other places): there is no consistent pay floor/guarantee. Generally, if the band has a terrible night financially it means that the venue/other staff is not having a lucrative night, because it reflects a slow night of business. Some venues on Frenchmen do sometimes offer a pay floor/basic guarantee, but this is not standard practice– most commonly, the venue provides 20% of their total bar ‘take’, and then tipping makes up a major chunk of musicians’ take-home pay. There is a divergence in the music community around tipping, and many musicians won’t play without a guaranteed level of pay, or at least a known cover charge at the door, but it is understood that this is not the setup on Frenchmen.
Soliciting tips is an entirely separate skill-set from musical talent and knowledge. Musicians learn the ‘tip hustle’ along the way, but not all have stopped to reflect on this hidden-in-plain-sight secondary expertise. The traits that make someone good at getting an audience to tip don’t always mesh with the musical skills. Some of my interview subjects self-identified as being good at getting tips, and some specifically said they were terrible at it, or more commonly ‘hated’ doing it. But everyone agreed that tips can make the difference between a bad, mediocre, and good night’s pay. It can vary far more than the ‘take’ from the venue itself, and is more dependent on the musicians themselves.
The history of tipping is rooted in deeply racist practices, which complicates the ‘tip hustle’ for musicians of color even if neither they nor the audience consciously recognize it. Similarly, there is the sense that most women musicians are performing femininity in some way as well as music. Most of the women I interviewed had at least one story about being judged on sexiness or flirtation rather than musicianship.
Working musicians undertake some complex personal mathematical projections when deciding if a gig is worth taking. Part of my intention with this project is to unpack those calculations, because they give insight into the cultural economy. Many factors on Frenchmen complicate quantification: the flow of the week (less money on weeknights, more on weekends), the flow of the year (slow tourism seasons vs. busy), special days (Jazz Fest, Halloween, New Year’s, etc.), other costs (parking, food, etc.). Frenchmen gigs have always included non-monetary benefits as well. Musicians get future gigs by hanging out on the street, seeing fellow musicians, sitting in on gigs, and then there is the ‘incubation’ element, where bands grow through weekly or monthly gigs (‘paid rehearsals’). In recent years, the musical-innovation element of the street is perceived to have receded, but many say it’s still strong. Hence, a three-part value system for musicians playing on Frenchmen: gigs are some combination of financially, socially, and musically beneficial.
Conclusions
Frenchmen is legendary, a long-standing musical incubator and ecosystem where the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Despite changing over the years, it still maintains a distinct character. However while the number of tourists visiting the street has increased dramatically in recent years, there is general agreement that musicians’ pay on Frenchmen has not gone up much in the last few decades: 10% at most, clearly not enough to keep pace with living costs. The economic benefits not keeping pace with the social and musical changes on Frenchmen seems to be at the root of musicians’ discontent with the recent arc of the economy of the street.
Most studies of tipped workers focus on those in restaurants. Musicians often sit at the intersection of low-wage and highly-skilled, and a lot more study needs to be done to understand the unique financial challenges of the cultural economy as a whole. I am trying to bring data, analysis, and some of the collected wisdom of the participants to light, so that discussions on policy, zoning, economics etc. can be grounded in the day-to-day reality of working on Frenchmen. We can figure out how to bring Frenchmen more deliberately into its next 40 years while preserving its unique character, and nurturing musicians’ livelihoods.
Sources referenced:
Campanella, Richard. Bourbon Street: a History. Louisiana State University Press, 2014.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: on (Not) Getting by in America. Metropolitan Books, 2017
Kreiger-Benson, Hannah. “Frenchmen Street Research.” MaCCNO, 2018 maccno.com/frenchmen-street-research
Kreiger-Benson, Hannah. “FRENCHMEN STREET: The Complicated Rise of an Accidental Entity.” 3009 Toulouse St., New Orleans, 21 Nov. 2011.
Oatman, Maddie, et al. “The Racist, Twisted History of Tipping.” Mother Jones, 24 June 2017, www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/04/restaurants-tipping-racist-origins-saru-jayaraman-forked/
Wann, Elizabeth. “American Tipping Is Rooted in Slavery-and It Still Hurts Workers Today.” Ford Foundation, 6 Apr. 2018, www.fordfoundation.org/ideas/equals-change-blog/posts/american-tipping-is-rooted-in-slavery-and-it-still-hurts-workers-today/