€12,000 on Tribali is money well spent

When it emerged that Tribali were engaged to perform at a national festivity for €12,000, some people reacted as if it were some sort of scandal

OK, I’ll admit that ‘Tribali’ is not my favourite local band. Nothing against them, mind you. It’s just that, if I really wanted to listen to a bunch of bare-chested men banging on animal-skin drums with sticks and bones… I’d wait for the invention of the Time Machine, and travel back to the late Pleistocene. (Or, even better, just download all the past episodes of ‘The Flintstones’.)

Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer the good old ‘guitar-bass-drums’ set-up myself. Didgeridoos, Djembes, Cahons and Morchungas and all that… they may sound more impressive, but they also sound like the sort of thing you’d order in a Mexican-Thai fusion restaurant, to be eaten with chop-sticks and washed down with a bottle of Corona.  

But that’s just me, and I am certainly no expert in World Music. Tribali may sound to my ears like a herd of buffalo stampeding over corrugated iron, with a dozen car alarms going off in the background… but people who actually understand music seem to think they’re rather good, and who the heck am I to argue? 

Even without that consideration: given a choice between Tribali and 90% of the stuff that annually competes for the Eurovision Song Contest... I’d go with the half-naked men banging on pots and pans any day, thank you very much. There is, after all, something to be said for the energy, the dedication, the atavism, the full-bodied (literally) immersion into World Music, and everything else that we associate with a Tribali gig. Unlike almost any other band I know, you don’t actually have to like their music (still less understand it) to enjoy the show.

Something else could be said for the fact that Tribali manages to attract crowds of up to 5,000 and more. Off-hand, I can’t think of a local band or artist of equivalent stature (i.e., not counting the likes of Joseph Calleja) that can make the same claim. Brikkuni, I understand, come close; maybe Ira Losco too. There was certainly a time when Freddie Portelli might have filled the Ta’ Qali stadium… just with his sideburns. 

But my experience, as someone who goes to local gigs every once in a while, is that you don’t get anywhere near that sort of turn-out for a single act in Malta. Ever. You don’t even get it for festivals featuring dozens of bands. I’ve been to Death Metal festivals – featuring a wealth of local bands (often very good indeed… even if they are named things like ‘Abysmal Torment’), and also headliners from other countries – which were so small they could comfortably be accommodated on the upstairs balcony of Remedy in Paceville. 

So whatever I make of their music myself, Tribali have clearly tapped into some remote corner of the national subconscious (whatever that might mean). They have amassed a loyal following which would be considered ‘sizeable’ even by the standards of much larger countries…. and that is really quite something, when you consider that the genre they represent would actually be considered ‘niche’ and somewhat obscure in most parts of the world.

They have also created a product which is eminently marketable, as can be attested by the band’s successful participation in numerous international World Music festivals. They have headlined global music events (including Byron Bay Bluesfest, Australia, where they were described as the ‘best band ever to perform’ there) and even placed an album in the Top 30 World Music charts. (OK, the Top 30 Canadian charts… but hey! Chart success is chart success, even if it doesn’t really get much more random than that).

Put the whole shebang all together, and… well, sorry, folks. If you want to tuck into a little slice of the Tribali pie… you’re just going to have to dig into your pockets, and flipping pay for it. Above all, you’re going to have to let go of the idea that all the hard (unpaid) work and passion put into something as extraordinarily successful as that, would simply be offered up for a pittance so that other people can reap the reward.

And yet, when it emerged that Tribali were engaged to perform at a national festivity for the not-at-all impressive fee of €12,000… when, in other countries, it might be closer to €120,000 – some people reacted as if it were some sort of scandal. An abuse of public funds. A waste of taxpayers’ money. 

It will, of course, be observed that most of the people complaining (note: it would be a sweeping statement to say ‘all’, though I strongly suspect it would also be true) are people who have never themselves contributed anything even remotely creative to the public sphere. Of the people who have contributed, on the other hand – other recording or performing artists, published writers, etc. – most did not automatically begrudge Tribali their windfall. These people have an idea of what being creative actually means; they know that ‘producing stuff’ invariably means investing part of yourself into the process. Time and money, for starters… but so much more than that. 

Even the simple fact that so few of us have enjoyed anything comparable to Tribali’s success should point us in a certain direction. If, instead of music, Tribali produced and/or patented some sort of invention or commodity – some ground-breaking new software, for instance, or a state-of-the-art, computerised toenail-cutter… they would be in a position to place it on the market at whatever price they think would sell. And if they became millionaires as a result…who among us would cry foul? Who would bat an eyelid, if a product for which there was huge demand actually did well on the market, and made its producers rich?

If your product is music, on the other hand… everyone simply expects you to hand it over for nothing (or next to nothing). It doesn’t matter that the demand for Tribali concerts is evidently very high. Nor does it matter that the people behind that superbly successful band have clearly invested countless man hours of solid, hard work – writing their music, mastering their instruments, rehearsing, performing, recording, editing, etc – to make it a success. 

It’s only ‘music’. It doesn’t have any real ’value’.

I find that attitude vaguely depressing myself. It shifts from ’vaguely’ to ‘positively’ when you also stop to think of the amount of taxpayer money invested in other spheres. €12,000 to engage an ultra-popular band for a national event suddenly doesn’t sound like much, when you also remember that we spent €85 million on a new Parliament building: much of which consisted in the architect’s fees (because of course, our MPs deserve nothing less than the best architect in the world).

We also spent €600 million on a hospital which turned out to be smaller and less practical than the one it replaced… with the result that we now need another €200 million (coming from private sources, this time) to reopen the hospital we closed in 2008.

That’s almost a billion right there…. one sixth of our national GDP. And I haven’t even mentioned the most obvious comparison: the Eurovision Song Contest. Malta annually spends €400,000 to participate… admittedly only 10% comes out of taxes (the rest is covered by private sponsors) but still, that’s €40,000 a year. You could get four Tribali gigs a year for that money… which, let’s face it, is a heck of a lot more than we ever got out of Eurovision. 

Then there’s a curious anomaly, whereby we actually spent €1.4 million to host the Junior Eurovision Song Contest last year. I mean, it’s great that we won and all – twice – but just think of the implications. How much would winning the adult version – something we have spent untold millions trying to do, ever since we first participated in 1971 – cost the Maltese taxpayer? I shudder to think.

All the same, I won’t begrudge the money spent on either Junior or Senior variations of what is probably the lowest standard of international musical contest the world has ever seen. (Note: to be fair, the Junior Eurovision is a lot better). For much the same reason as I think €12,000 on Tribali is money well spent. What I or anyone else thinks of the music doesn’t matter: the important thing is that remuneration also means recognition that music – in and of itself – has an intrinsic value, as all art does. 

With that recognition come opportunities: and with opportunities in place, talent has something to work towards.

Surely that’s worth paying a little something for…