PrintThe College Music Journal Music Marathon & Film Festival, now in its
29th year, is by far the largest music event in the city. In a few
weeks, thousands of artists and fans will descend on New York to
participate in all that the event has to offer. The Eye sits down with
founder Joanne Abbot Green to discuss her role as parent to the
Marathon and her place in the one musical world where money isn’t a
concern.
What has your role been in CMJ from its beginnings until now?
I joined CMJ in 1983. Bobby Haber founded CMJ in 1978, and we met and
discussed this little event that he had conceived of as a small
conference of less than 100 people that started in 1981. When I came
in, in 1983, I renamed the event CMJ Music Marathon, and I have been
executive producing the event since that point. … I am now a co-owner
of the company as well —Bobby and I co-own CMJ together.
What was the marathon supposed to accomplish? What was your mission for it?
Well, it actually began as a way to bring college radio subscribers
together with record companies, and at that time CMJ was strictly
serving college radio stations across the country and the musicians
who were seeking airplay on them. It was obviously a time before the
Internet, and CMJ was the convention, as we called it back then, that
those two groups could communicate in. It began as a business seminar,
and it grew in the late ’80s and early ’90s into the festival,
broadening its mission to present some of the world’s best new music
to fans as opposed to just industry folks in New York and around the
world.
At this point it’s considered New York City’s largest music event. It
has an estimated attendance of 125,000 concertgoers in 75-plus venues
across the city over five days and nights. So what started at a really
tiny business conference has just exploded.
But most music events never last this long.
I think the city itself provides such a special backdrop for the
event. It’s the most cosmopolitan city—it’s edgy and advanced, and the
festival really feeds off of that energy. And it seems that New York
now feeds off the energy of CMJ. It’s grown so much that it has become
inextricably a part of the city, and I think that that’s a strong part
of it. I think because Bobby and I have grown this event together as a
team it really works. Our focus on finding the best new innovative
music has truly never wavered. We’ve been very invested in that. … I
kind of view it as looking at a prism—you view the facts that are
there, but to get it, you have to go beyond that. And that’s the way
we go about this—we really push ourselves. We have become involved in
Broadway: for example, we brought “Spring Awakening” and Duncan Sheik
to perform at CMJ last year. ... We have become a rather international
destination as well. We had something like 40 countries worldwide
apply to CMJ. Twenty percent of the bands apply from international
territories and about the same percent end up performing. I think that
we’ve really stretched CMJ to its limits, and we are always seeking
new types of involvements. We haven’t really tried to reinvent the
event, but rather, seen how we can apply every area to it.
But I’m sure as the exec for this event you must have to think about
the financial aspect to keep everything up and going.
Well, certainly the economy this year is interesting. But honestly,
Bobby and I have a pact about this. The event really is a child of
ours, and, like a child, we leave no room for failure as far as
letting it go. We are constantly feeding the event and nurturing and
nourishing it, and with that comes other people’s support.
So no problems getting sponsors?
We’re solid in the way that we are doing business. People look to
these events because they do really need them. We provide so much as
part of this event, between our daytime panels ... we have around 65
panels that focus on the music industry and culture and politics and
art and film and they are all really mentoring sessions. We have over
400 panelists and moderators that are involved. We have a CLE
[Continuing Legal Education] program that we have partnered with the
New York State Bar Association that has become very popular. We have
attorneys attending that one day for five or six panels that focus on
the legal issues that are facing the industry. We have keynote
speakers that talk about absolutely everything. Obviously, our
showcases at night and our film festivals are a huge attraction. There
is so much that we do and that we offer that it becomes a destination
for people to learn about what is going on in this music industry of
ours and the turmoil that it has been in.
And has CMJ been this involved in the industry from the start, or is
it a more recent development?
We had several panels back then, and as the years progressed, we
became more focused on the culture and politics of the industry. In
1992 we had Reverend Jesse Jackson as our keynote speaker three days
before the presidential election. And that really got us more involved
in politics. Last year, CNN became very involved and broadcast from
there as well. There has been so many progressions each year with the
festival and so many different directions we have gone in, but even
though the concerts seem to be one of the biggest attractions now, the
panels and the discussions are really at the root of things and they
have always been there.