When our ability to speak is not restrained by a 28-page contract and legal threats, we will expose what happens when you 'step up' at the Recording Academy, a public nonprofit.
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It takes two at NARAS and the Grammy Awards: two pianos, two factions, two lawsuits, two investigations.
(Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Tuesday - January 21, 2020 Tue - 01/21/20
rantnrave:// Sooooo... GRAMMY week. Not exactly how LIZZO or BILLIE EILISH pictured it, one imagines. There's one detail that's been nagging at me about the RECORDING ACADEMY telling its first female CEO to step aside as soon as she stepped up—to use the unfortunate language of her predecessor—and started dismantling the very barriers to progress that had gotten her predecessor into language trouble in the first place. The timing. That's what nags at me. The Academy's executive committee was aware two months ago, we've been told, of complaints that CEO DEBORAH DUGAN was fostering an "abusive work environment." And one month ago, the board received a letter from a lawyer for a single staff member who upped the description to "toxic and intolerable" and "abusive and bullying." Workplace bullying and abusiveness in any form is wrong and shouldn't be tolerated. I'm not here to defend it. It's also widespread across pretty much every industry, music included. There are rarely consequences for the abuser. There should be. But if the abuse in this case was as toxic and extraordinary as we're being asked to believe, why was it OK for Dugan to still be running the show two months later? If the bullying was so bad that you'd be willing to fire your own CEO, or at least put her on leave, a week before the GRAMMY AWARDS—the Recording Academy's SUPER BOWL—how could you have let her keep doing her thing for the two months prior? What's the exact allegation here? How bad are we talking? And if it wasn't so bad that you couldn't let it go for a couple months while you looked into the complaints, then why act now? What's going on? What's the message? What's the fear? That it will be harder to discredit her after she oversees her first successful Grammy broadcast? That's actually been suggested, and it sounds like a conspiracy theory, at least until you start thinking about it. As for everything else we've been forced to think about for the past few days, it's safe to say most of us don’t have all the facts. There's a lot to sort out, and we'll be sorting it out over the coming days and weeks. (Board chair and interim CEO HARVEY MASON JR.—who for what it's worth co-produced this track by one of the most famously snubbed women in Grammy history—expressed concern Monday that all this sorting out could take attention away from the artists whom the Grammys are designed to celebrate. But that one's on Mason's own board for acting exactly 10 days before the ceremony. What did they think would happen?) Were there conflicts of interest and financial management high up in the org, and did Dugan step up into a puddle by trying to rein it all in? Were the Academy's millions of dollars in outside legal expenses exorbitant? Did Dugan go up against an old guard of old white men and lose? Will the Academy ever welcome the sweeping reforms its own task force on diversity and inclusion recommended? Did Dugan try to do too much too soon without acclimating to the existing culture? Was she too much of an outsider? "If she was a dude who was coming in, would it be characterized differently?" Will any women, or anyone at all, say anything when the Grammys are broadcast Sunday? MusicSET: "Grammy Wars: New CEO Steps Up, Recording Academy Asks Her to Step Down"... Is it weird/eerie that the former assistant who's contemplating suing Dugan for workplace abuse has retained a HARVEY WEINSTEIN lawyer while Dugan has retained a lawyer for one of Weinstein's accusers, or is that just to be expected in the small world that is the entertainment industry?... OPRAH WINFREY says she absolutely did not pull out of executive producing a documentary about RUSSELL SIMMONS' accusers because he pressured her to do so, but rather she decided independently to pull out after he did exactly that. The doc, ON THE RECORD, will premiere this month at SUNDANCE but is no longer headed to APPLE TV PLUS... SPOTIFY is in talks to buy the RINGER, per the WALL STREET JOURNAL... RIP the great Nashville songwriter DAVID OLNEY, who on Saturday night "was playing a song when he paused, said 'I’m sorry' and put his chin to his chest. He never dropped his guitar or fell off his stool. It was as easy and gentle as he was"... RIP also tenor saxophone great JIMMY HEATH; New Orleans singer/songwriter ROBERT PARKER, and PETER LARKIN, who co-designed P-FUNK's Mothership.

- Matty Karas, curator
step right up
REDEF
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steppin' out
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MUSIC OF THE DAY
YouTube
"Step Off"
Kacey Musgraves
“REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’”
@JasonHirschhorn


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