Brikkuni Teatru Rjal outrage recalls performance venue problems

Though most of the island was probably away from their computers last Thursday in favour of a spot of the sunny outdoors on the occasion of the feast of Santa Marija, a section of Malta's social networking web was alight with sound and fury, as the folk-pop act Brikkuni announced that they will be cancelling their concert at Valletta's Teatru Rjal in September owing to allegedly sky-high rental fees.

Eleventh hour discussions with the concerned parties may lead Brikkuni to reconsider their decision, though no official confirmation was forthcoming by the time of going to print.

Taking to Facebook to vent his frustration, Brikkuni frontman Mario Vella revealed that the venue - the restored Old Opera House - would cost €2,000 to rent, a figure that, according to Vella's calculations, would balloon up to €3,940 when all expenses (including sound engineering, security and other concert necessities) are taken into account.

"Nobody can afford such terms, except for those few bands who have the necessary social connections to win sponsorships and those cultural prostitutes who are ready to affiliate any sort of product or service to the arts just to sell tickets," Vella said on his Facebook wall.

Fans and fellow musicians were largely sympathetic to Vella's protestations. Former Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson Michael Briguglio wrote a rapid-fire blog post on the issue, suggesting that the restrictive fee gives the lie to Labour's supposedly emancipatory electoral promises.

"If anything, this confirms that the 'taghna lkoll' talk of 'inclusive' cultural policy before the last general elections was nothing but half-hearted plagiarism of progressive proposals for a truly egalitarian and emancipatory cultural policy," Briguglio wrote.

But though the (seemingly interminable) Facebook discussion that followed Vella's announcement was chiefly concerned with whether the Teatru Rjal rental fee was justified, it also brought to mind one as yet unresolved issue within the local musical scene: a lack of adequate concert venues for bands to perform in.

Back in May 2011, a similar online furore had erupted over the challenges local musicians faced in organising concerts, chiefly due to the fact that suitable - and crucially, open air - venues were only accessible at the expense of a restrictive €11,646 police guarantee.

Musicians can, of course, opt to play in venues like bars, which would be licensed to sell alcohol and play loud music until 11pm. But this leaves them vulnerable to inflexible police curfews - with many a concert having been cut short - and often inadequate, cramped venues.

Speaking to MaltaToday in May 2011, musician Daniel Cassar described an all-too-frequent scene in Maltese live music.

"The result is an overly crowded venue, uncomfortable for the band, and uncomfortable for the punters, and basically more of the same, without leeway for improvement, keeping crowds used to live shows abroad to really just come out of sympathy, not actually because they are getting their money's worth, starting a vicious circle of having to keep entrance fees ridiculously low, volatile turnouts, playing to the same 200-300 people, never improving the actual show, and not being able to attract more people."

This may be one reason why local musicians feel the need to jump at the opportunity to perform at the first available outdoor venue such as Teatru Rjal - an outdoor space with substantial seating in which musicians run little risk of having their concert interrupted by the police, to say nothing of the - real or perceived - prestige that comes with performing at such a central and highly publicised venue.

However, performance venues for local musicians don't seem to be all that high on government's agenda. When, last May, musician William Mangion was appointed by government as a 'coordinator of local bands', his first task was to help bands secure adequate rehearsal spaces - a particularly baffling decision given that Maltese bands have been practicing in garages in Marsa, Birkirkara and other areas for a number of years and with no real difficulty.

Last minute negotiations?

According to a spokesperson from the Parliamentary Secretary for Culture, discussions between the concerned parties and the board of the Teatru Rjal took place yesterday in an attempt to reach a compromise and possibly allow for the Brikkuni concert to take place as originally planned.

However, no details of the meeting were forthcoming at the time of going to print, and when contacted by MaltaToday, Charles 'is-City' Gatt, who chairs the board of the Teatru Rjal, said that he did not wish to comment on the matter as of yet.

"I honestly hope that changes take place, not just for our sake, but for the sake of all musicians on the island," Mario Vella wrote on Facebook.