The South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival was unveiled in 1987 with the aim of becoming the launch pad for emerging artists, as well as to bring together musicians and fans alike. However, after 30 years of SXSW in Austin, where many great musicians hail from, it seems the festival may be doing more harm than good to the city's emerging talent.
From the time, SXSW became a huge success when it was first launched with over 700 people arriving to participate — a great excess to the 150 participants the four co-founders expected to receive.
Of course, we all know now how big SXSW is. Attendees of the festival would notice that, not only is the SXSW increasingly welcomes established artists, the city itself has become more developed over the years. That's exactly where the problem lies.
The development happening raises the cost of living in Austin and makes both emerging musicians and its local folks struggle with the festival's impact. Some famed locations for musical performances even closed down and have been replaced with luxury condominiums and hotels. The cost of staying in Austin now overshadows what it stands for.
"International bands plow huge amounts of money to be at South By [Southwest]," Ritzy Bryan, who belongs to the Wales band, Joy Formidable, said.
Start-up bands and solo musicians have a hard time finding a stage to perform on and SXSW, which was supposed to showcase local talent, has seen a rise in the number of international bands flying in to perform.
"The definition of local has changed," SXSW co-founder Roland Swenson mused back in 2010. And it has, indeed.
Now the government has set out to find ways to help its local musicians stay in the ever growing city and keep the music alive, not because of the SXSW Festival but because music is the heart and soul of Austin.
"You don't get to be the live music capital of the world if you've lost all your artists," Mayor Steve Adler said.
Even the people are concerned to the point that non-profit organizations have turned their attention to the growing problem and a panel has been officially scheduled at the SXSW for it.
"Soul Series seeks to honor and encourage our musicians in a time that many are doubting that they stay in Austin during times of increased cost of living, or that people in Austin even understand the pressures they are facing as working musicians," Rev. Merrill Wade, Rector at St Matthew's Episcopal Church and Founder of The Soul of a Musician Series, explained the concept for the panel.
"Fostering creative and professional growth, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery," the SXSW website claims, but as to who exactly is growing seems slightly questionable at this point.
