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Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, as ever, Rod Davis, and this week it's just me. Uh hello, guest this week. We've got some other great guests coming up, and we've had a good run of it recently, but partly uh due to my uh slight lack of planning and the fact that I've been away. Uh and also because I've been wanting to do a deep dive episode for a while, I thought I'd take the opportunity to do one where it's just me digging into a top uh and a good topic, I think, and timely. So this week I want to delve into the question of the relationship between philanthropy and music. Um so my prompt for doing this uh is the fact that it's Eurovision. Uh that's right. The Eurovision song contest is coming up this weekend as I record this and as this show comes out. So if you're listening very much uh at the early stages of this episode being out, yeah, you've still got Eurovision to look forward to. I should say my money, uh just uh so that I can get this down on record, is on Unicorn by Noah Kirill, uh Israel's entry, which I think is an absolute banger. So if uh listening back to this in the future you find out that I prove to be right, uh then just call me Nostradamus, and if not, well, you know, everyone's a winner really, aren't they? Um but the reason that I wanted to take this as a prompt to talk about philanthropy and music, um there's a couple of reasons. I mean, one is that Eurovision itself, although it's not strictly speaking anything really to do with philanthropy, is a musical project that has a kind of higher purpose. It was originally founded as a way of sort of bringing people together around the idea of the European ideal, uh, and it's kind of you know developed beyond that into a an annual celebration of kitsch every year, but it does also, I guess, have you know that that sort of central idea of solidarity and kind of transcending geopolitics at its core. Um, and certainly you know the context this year is interesting from that point of view because Liverpool is only hosting it because in fact Ukraine won last year, but obviously they're not in a position to host uh this year's competition as a result of the war that's ongoing there. So Liverpool's bid was very much based around the idea that they would host it on behalf of Ukraine, and so a large focus of all of the stuff that's around me in town where I live at the moment is around uh understanding Ukrainian culture and kind of solidarity with Ukraine. The other reason that I wanted to do this is basically because it's an episode I've been meaning to do for ages, um, and I've been looking for an opportunity or for something to kind of give me a bit of a kick to do it. And music's always been a really big part of my life. Um, like a lot of 40 somethings, I slightly struggle to kind of maintain it these days, so I'm very much at that point in my life where I'm uh complaining that I never find out about new bands and also that I have time to play music or listen to music. Um, but it's it's something that's always been very important and does continue to still be important. I I reckon, you know, in a way I've always had pretty kind of broad tastes when it comes to music. When I was a a kid, I was weirdly obsessed with classical music. So um I learned the guitar the uh the piano for quite a while, um, not to any great standard, it has to be said, but I was quite obsessive about it. I then had a brief interlude of learning the bassoon, which was fun up to the point where I learned to play Star Wars and the Sorcerer's Apprentice, and then I got a bit bored. So I moved on uh to playing the guitar, which I have stuck with for a lot longer. Um so I've been in bands um and kind of continue to fiddle around with the guitar these days, uh, and actually should uh take the opportunity to flag up that the intro to this podcast and indeed all of the bits of music that I pepper throughout the episodes is is by me, so that's about the one musical output that I still have these days. Um and so what I wanted to do was to think in this episode about the different ways that philanthropy has interacted with music. Um I want to think about how philanthropy has been a source of support for music and for musicians. I want to think about how musicians have themselves been philanthropists, and I want to think about how music has been used as a tool for philanthropy. I should say up front that, as is again, you know, partly due to the fact that I was away for a week in the US recently and I've got a lot else on my plate, this is probably a bit more of an improv episode than some, but just think of it like the sort of Grateful Dead concert version of a philanthropy podcast. So some bits of it'll be good, some of it'll be far too baggy and a bit boring, uh, and the whole thing will probably sound better if you're on acid, quite frankly. So uh without further ado, let's get into it. So let's have a bit of a think first about the idea of music as a cause area or as a focus for philanthropy. I guess the thing to be said that if you look at the history here, um if you take the 1601 statute of charitable uses as as a starting point, which I'm sure we all do on a daily basis, then music didn't make it onto the list. Um these were things that were more specifically to do with kind of traditional idea of charity as the relief of poverty, and it should be said very much the things that the Tudor government really wanted to specify that it didn't want to have to take responsibility for itself, so it thought it would uh delineate them as the acceptable objects of charity. But but then the time you get round to 1891 and the the famous Pembsel case, which uh in which Lord McNaughton ended up outlining the four heads of charity that have become the kind of defining pillars of UK charity law and by extension uh a lot of kind of common law around the world, um, there there was within that provision for both uh education and then also things that were of wider community benefit. Uh, and within that, I think arts and music began to be seen as acceptable focus areas for philanthropy. But when I was thinking about trying to try to trace this history and I was digging around, it struck me that there are some earlier kind of antecedents of this that we should maybe think a little bit about. I mean, one is the idea of chantry. So if you go back to the medieval period, the various forms of charitable giving that could be found there, probably the best known one is alms giving, so people giving uh to help the needy and the poor through the church, so the idea of the sort of the alms box or the poor box, which people would give money into and that that would then be distributed in the local parish. But there was also a separate idea of chantry, which was where relatively well-off people and people of modest means could pay in order to have someone within the church uh essentially kind of sing religious songs on behalf of people whose souls that they wanted to help or to give salvage to. And this was, you know, very uh lucrative moneymaker for the church and certainly was was seen as a form of charity in that same way that in the medieval period the idea of things that could be used to uh improve the quality of one's immortal soul was seen as as particularly important. But I guess it's maybe a little bit of a cul-de-sac in that we're not really talking about supporting music there for music's sake, it's just merely a kind of curious where it happens to have a musical flavour to it. I guess the bit where we come more specifically onto music is it is around the idea of patronage. So basically, in order to be a musician throughout history, um, you've got to be able to live and to eat and to find ways of making money that allow you to develop your skill and to write music and to be a performer. And your choices in terms of doing that, I guess these days you can look for state grants, although that wasn't really an option for most of human history, and we'll come on to that in a little bit. Your options were commercial, so you could sell tickets and you know, uh go and give musical performances and ask for contributions, which many, many musicians have done throughout history and continue to do, although I guess to some extent you then are driven by commercial uh pressures and commercial dynamics that may uh lead you away from art towards populism, uh, which is a whole other debate. Or your option, your other option is to appeal to people who do have resources and similarly care about music as a kind of pure art form in itself to support your skill and talent uh in order that you have the time and space to be brilliant and compose and to perform. And that certainly is the relationship that we see um many classical composers, famous ones, having with wealthy benefactors and patrons. I guess there's an interesting question about whether it's philanthropy or not, in the strictest sense, in that there's definitely more than a healthy dose of self-interest there and reciprocity, because the wealthy person's uh act of patronage is um predicated on the idea that they will get enjoyment out of the music and they will get reputational benefit out of being associated with uh that artist. There's also, I guess, all kinds of issues around power dynamics, which there always are um when you're talking about uh giving from the wealthy to those who have much less, but I think they're kind of even more acute in these patronage relationships. And in some ways, it feels a little bit like um the situation around corporate sponsorships these days. So lots of companies will have sponsorship arrangements with music music organizations or arts or cultural organizations that are separate in some way from straightforward corporate philanthropy. I think because the level of self-interest or return that they get in terms of reputation and branding is seemed to kind of cross a threshold somewhere, and so they need to be slightly distinguished, even if essentially you know the money might be going to the same institution and used to fund largely the same activities. But there's you know a really rich history of patronage, as I say. So um just a few kind of interesting examples that I came across uh in doing the research for this. So uh there's a man called Baron Gottfried van Sveten, who um lived in the late 18th uh and early 19th century, and he was a sort of big mover in um Vienna of that late period. Um he was genuinely a huge music lover, and and like a lot of patrons, he kind of fancied himself a little bit as a musician and artist, although probably recognised that he his talent wasn't you know enough by itself for him to achieve fame, but because because he had money, he then used that money to support others. So uh he financially supported Mozart, but also he supported Beethoven and Haydn. And it and said not necessarily in the form of a salary, but rather he would hand out very generous tips, which again is interesting in that um the power dynamic involved in that, if you're not paying somebody a salary or a stipend, but you're essentially rewarding them for something, it makes you, as the the financial uh sponsor, very much the one that has the power to determine what's good and what isn't. And then just another example that I thought was interesting, because I'm I'm particularly interested in kind of 19th and uh early 20th century Russian classical music myself, um, was a man called Mitrovan Belayev, who was a Russian industrialist, um, again, who would have liked to have been a professional musician himself, um, and he gave financial support to lots of composers, including um uh Glazinov, Riz Rimsky Khorsakov, and Borodin, and he published a lot of their music um sort of on generous terms and he paid for all of it. And he actually founded the Russian Symphony Concerts, which was a sort of series that's only open to Russian composers, and lots of famous works were uh written for that, um, including uh Rimsky Korsakov's Capriccio Espanol, which is one of my favourite pieces of classical music. So that whole history of kind of patronage as a model for funding music, um, clearly has uh lots of similarities to philanthropy, even if it isn't quite philanthropy in the sense that we often understand it. There are then other things that bring us a bit closer to philanthropy, and again, maybe aren't pure philanthropy in the sense that we sometimes think of it. One is the models uh like violin trusts, which are a fascinating little cure, that still exists today. And this is where uh a wealthy individual or often a group of individuals will come together and pool resources, um, and they will then offer very favourable low interest loans to musicians, promising talented musicians at the start of their careers, to enable them to buy um a musical instrument of the suitable quality for them to develop further, usually, as the name suggests, a violin, because violins are extraordinarily expensive. And then the idea is that if that if as and when that uh musician becomes uh sufficiently famous later on in life or earns enough money, they will then slowly be able to pay back that money into the violin trust, and that can then be loaned out uh again to another promising young musician. So it's essentially a an early form of social investment uh or kind of impact investing. And actually, you know, similar things are done at a grander scale in the in in the sense of trying to support musicians at that early stage of their career, which is one of the places in which musicians often need philanthropic support because that's possibly the point before they're able to uh kind of be commercially successful even as an option. And so if they're going to get to the point where they might be able to sell their music or perform for money, they they need support in the uh in the form of philanthropy or where there isn't an expectation of financial return. But at a grander scale, you have things like the Royal College of Music here in the UK, which was uh created in 1883. It came originally out of the Great Exhibition of 1851, or at least the idea did, and then it took quite a long time to sort of bring this to fruition and reality, and and indeed the people involved in uh organizing it did an enormous amount of fundraising around the country to try and raise sufficient funds that they could offer scholarships for talented uh young musicians, which is you know still a model that the organization uh follows today. And then I guess in terms of where philanthropy is of value or of necessity in the life of a musician, the other place where it was always very important was at the end of their career or after the end of their career, if for whatever reason they weren't able to perform or to play or to write anymore, as with many other types of careers. Obviously, there was no safety net particularly. Um, and so there is a strong uh tradition within the sort of history of this of both philanthropic support in the form of benevolent funds where those who still have resources give uh to help those who might be you know down on their luck or in financial hardship, and also others which follow more of a kind of mutual aid and solidarity model. So there was a rich history in the 19th century in in the UK of things called friendly societies, which were part sort of mutual aid organizations, part social uh insurance and social security before the state uh took any responsibility for that. And so people would kind of pay into a central pool, and then that money would be used um partly to provide kind of entertainments and and social benefits, but more importantly to provide payments when people were sick or ill or injured or on death for for their families, and so it was a kind of form of collective insurance. And just thinking about one example of this um in terms of the history of kind of benevolent funds, the Royal Society of Musicians in the UK, which still still exists today, very much so, it can trace its origins all the way back to 1738. So a group of musicians then set up a thing, uh a fund for the support of decayed musicians or their families, and this was a sort of hybrid between a friendly society and a charity. So it did a little bit of both. There was some kind of collective solidarity, mutual aid, and there was also the ability for people to give to those who were less fortunate than themselves. And the story of how this came about is is quite sort of uh interesting and striking. So it's apparently three London musicians, uh Michael Christian, Festing, Charles Widerman, and uh one of the members of the Vincent family, were standing at the door of the Orange Coffee House in Haymarket when they happened to see two boys driving asses and obviously in a desperately impoverished condition. They recognised that the children were actually the sons of one of their former colleagues, uh, an oboe player called Kitsch, who had died suddenly and left his family destitute. And they were so struck by this that they contacted uh another a group of other musicians who they they knew and they thought might be similarly affected and might support their cause, and managed to raise some subscriptions to to help these boys. And they then sort of struck on the idea that actually ra you know, rather than just doing this on a one-off basis, why not establish a permanent fund to alleviate similar cases of distress? And and that's how the organisation was born. Now we're not doing this particularly chronologically, but I guess we're sort of broadly moving towards the end of the 19th century, early 20th century. And in terms of tracing the relationship between philanthropy and music at that point, I guess there's a a couple of things worth saying. One is that you do start to get more of the kind of overt uh involvement of big money philanthropy and in the 20th century kind of foundation, certainly in the US, in funding arts and cultural institutions. And then this brings in all the sort of questions around music as a status symbol, uh, and you know, the kind of stereotype of wealthy donors being involved in uh the opera hall or the concert uh house. And you also get an interesting thing which is you start to see views about what which kinds of music would qualify as you know, quote unquote art and therefore be the appropriate focus for philanthropy. We'll come on to that a moment when we talk about the uh the emergence of state funding for for for music. But I guess one thing to be said is that in the late 19th century um there was a huge uh level of interest in things like temperance uh and you know a lot of kind of moralizing and philanthropy that was driven by quite kind of evangelical principles and moralistic principles, which wanted to address issues around poverty and and sort of social improvement, but had very, very strong views about uh how that should be done, and often saw um uh poverty as a moral failing that needed to be addressed on an individual level. And music kind of came into this a little bit in that it was often seen as something that could be wholesome and give people uh a pastime that would keep them away from the pubs and the gin houses. And so when you see uh some of the planned workers' villages um of places like Port Sunlight or New Earswick up in York or Bourneville, often they had music performance areas because part of the ambition was to give the workers a good quality of life, but also to kind of steer them away from temptations and ills. And many of these places were themselves, you know, alcohol was prohibited, and instead you were supposed to go and and watch some kind of wholesome musical performances that were that were very improving. And and similarly, in terms of funding um musical venues, um I think there was a desire also there to kind of shift things away from the music hall, which was seen as kind of low entertainment and quite bawdy, and again kind of tied in with um you know depraved behaviour and people getting drunk and and all these sorts of things, and instead to uh try and raise people's horizons by supporting classical music and opera as a means to making them more civilized. So I think music certainly got tied in with quite paternalistic notions of of philanthropy as well. Which I guess leads us on uh to the involvement of the state in supporting the arts. Now, as I said, for a long period of time there was no question whatsoever that the state would get involved in supporting the arts because it just wasn't seen as part of its remit. That changes uh from around about the post-war period in the US and UK, although it it should just um be worth noting that actually some places cottoned onto this idea a bit earlier, and one thing I hadn't realized was, for instance, the government of Finland started giving support to individual composers, so particularly um uh Jan Sebelius, um, in 1898 he was given an annual grant so that he didn't have to teach anymore and he could just devote his life to composing. He initially got that for 10 years, which you know most organisations these days would would leap at, um, and it was later extended for life. So obviously the state uh for whatever reason kind of decided that supporting uh Sibelis's ability to uh write music and compose and to engage in his art was of value to them. Um obviously a lot of his music I think is sort of tied in with Finnish national identity, so there's probably you know that that sort of explains some of that that um desire to to fund it to some extent. But then looking at the UK and the US, so in the UK we've got the the birth of the arts council. So initially um in 1940, the a thing called the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts was founded. Um and the the eminent um economist John Maynard Keynes uh became its chair in 1941. Then it was renamed as the Arts Council in 1946, and it was set up uh to provide grants to support um arts and cultural organizations, including music, around the UK. Um, and then in the the US, they um had the uh similarly kind of in the 1940s and into the the 50s, there was a a decade in which there was a huge kind of explosion of arts and music funding in the US. So there was a thing called the National Endowment for the Arts, um, but also some of the existing big name foundations, particularly the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, um started giving large amounts to the arts and particularly to music. One uh figure that I found in a really interesting PhD thesis all about this topic said just between them, the National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation provided the equivalent in today's uh terms of uh two billion dollars to music programs over a period of two decades. The interesting thing again about this is I think it brings us back to that question of who gets to define what counts as art, particularly when it comes to music. And and music, you know, as we've said, has always sort of divided between high art uh music, classical music, opera, etc., uh, and popular music and low art music. And there has, you know, unfortunately, historically often been kind of racial elements to these divides. And it's noted in in one of these papers, it's sort of saying that one of the things as the state and these big foundations got involved in funding the arts is that they drew um the advice that they got, and particularly the consultants that they worked with from a limited group of you know understandably kind of white male artists um who were often composers or or kind of academics at elite institutions. So, I mean, people like Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland and others were were very much kind of called upon for their services. But it's saying, you know, they then had an enormous amount of power to determine and define what was meant by artistic excellence, um, and so that kind of sh set the tone and the funding agenda for what uh philanthropy should see as as the kind of music that it should aspire to fund. Uh, and it's only probably latterly that we've you know come back round to seeing you know popular music and other forms of music as things that have artistic value in in their own right. I guess the the final thing I just want to say in terms of you know this very, very broad brush tracing of philanthropy and music is one interesting trend that we've seen even more recently, I think, is philanthropy funding music, not necessarily just as an end in itself or on the basis of its artistic um uh qualities, but more on an instrumental basis um as a means to achieve other ends, such as um youth empowerment or improvements in mental health and well-being, or um working with older people with dementia, and actually recognizing that music can bring huge benefits as a tool for working with lots of these different groups, both in a therapeutic sense and also in terms of providing opportunities. And actually, you know, increasingly when we think about philanthropy funding music, we have to think about those different types of approaches as well as just the you know the obvious kind of big name philanthropist X funds opera house. Okay, well, that was longer than I thought it was going to be, as ever. I did say this was going to be a Grateful Dead style freak out. So in the next section, I just want to come back and think a bit about musicians as philanthropists, so stay tuned for that.

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Yet today is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available milk.

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So in this section, as I said, I just want to think a little bit about the role that musicians have played as philanthropists. I guess the frame and question in a way is plenty of musicians have been philanthropists throughout the ages, and we will talk about quite a few of them in this section. I guess the question is, is there anything unique or particular about musicians as philanthropists as opposed to anyone else who has assets of any kind? I guess I feel like there is, or maybe the combination of a few different things makes them particular or or perhaps even unique. You know, one is that they do have various different kinds of assets to give. So, like any other wealthy people, uh, if you've made a lot of money through music, you have your own money to give away. You also, you know, have your time in the same way that anybody else would be able to give their time. But you have some other options available to you as well, particularly these days when we're in an age of kind of global celebrity and obviously there's a lot of celebrity within the music industry, you're likely to have a platform either directly through your songs or just through your ability to act as a spokesperson and to have your voice listened to so you're able to kind of amplify different causes or speak up on on behalf of other people who may whose voices might not otherwise be heard. There's also the use of your music for fundraising purposes, and as we'll see, there's a kind of very rich history of that. Um so we're going to dig into all of those different things a little bit um throughout the rest of this podcast. The other things I just wanted to flag up about musicians as philanthropists that I think are kind of interesting. Um one is that not always, but I think often musicians are more likely to have come from a humble background or from you know relatively modest means than people who have made their money in, you know, say in investment banking or various types of industry. A little bit like sports, it is somewhere where if you just I mean not always, it's not saying that everybody who has you know musical ability by any means makes it, and I'm sure there's an enormous amount of elitism in the music industry as there is in in many other creative industries, but there is still a sense in which you can kind of come from essentially nothing and make it very, very big in the same way that you're able to do in sports. And so you have people who have come from that very, very humble background and therefore may have a personal experience that then drives their philanthropy, and that's certainly a theme that we'll see throughout a few of the stories that we'll we'll touch on in this section. I think there's also something about the fact that you know, from the point of view of the public, the perception of musicians of as philanthropists may be more positive, and perhaps that's because they're just people that the public is more likely to know than investment bankers or or people who work in industry because they're more kind of celebrity figures. I think there might also be something about people can understand how they've made their money. So I think if you look at somebody like Ed Sheeran, for instance, and he may you know have ambivalent feelings or even negative feelings about his music, but you can understand why it is that he has millions and millions of pounds because he's very, very successful in what he does uh in terms of the music that he makes, in a way that it's quite hard for most people to understand why somebody who is quite good at convertible bond arbitrage or something like that has made billions of pounds. So there's something more tangible about their wealth, and people might be more willing to view that positively and therefore view their philanthropy more positively. And then I guess the other thing is that if you are a uh a musician, you're likely to have an audience and a fan base. So there is a sort of public connection with a large group of people, and that's gonna give you uh ample opportunity to sort of both uh feel as though you need to meet the expectations of those people, um, and that might include kind of focusing on on particular causes, but also you'll have interactions with those people, and that will uh more than likely kind of drive more individual acts of uh of charity that may then kind of drive you towards focusing on particular things with your philanthropy. And again, that's something that we'll see come through in some of these stories. So let's start, I mean, not necessarily at the beginning, but I think a really good place to start in terms of the musician as philanthropist is to go back to the late 19th century and look at the career of the Swedish opera star Jenny Lind. Um now, Jenny Lind uh was probably not very well known by many people, including me, until uh relatively recently when she played a big part in the plot of the film The Greatest Showman uh with Hugh Jackman, which is all about the life of Petey Barnum, arguably uh a huge whitewashing of the life of Petey Barnum, who it wasn't really a very nice man. And, you know, uh having been forced to sit through the film a number of times, I can say that this isn't the uh the thing that's uh made me well disposed towards Jenny Lind. But I I I subsequently found out that she actually has a sort of fascinating history as a philanthropist. Um so she became a huge sort of global uh celebrity, um particularly Barnum did play a big role in taking her to America and promoting her and and kind of taking her on on huge tours around the country. But one of the things that Barnum noticed about her was a huge part of her brand was her charity. So this is just a quote from Barnum himself writing about Lind. He said, Since her debut in England, she's given to the poor from her own private purse more than the whole amount which I have engaged to give her, and the proceeds of concerts for charitable purposes in Great Britain, where she has sung gratuitously, have realized more than ten times that amount. During the past eight months she has been singing entirely gratuitously for charitable purposes, and she is now founding a benevolent institution in Stockholm, her native city at a cost of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A visit from such a woman who regards her high artistic powers as a gift from heaven for the amelioration of affliction and distress and whose every thought and deed is philanthropy, I feel persuaded will prove a blessing to America, as she has to every country which she has visited, and I feel every confidence that my countrymen and women will join me in heartily saying, may God bless her. So it's really interesting because there's obviously like, you know, plenty of kind of factual information in there about the fact she clearly was very charitable. But you also immediately get the sense that maybe uh Barnum is playing that up because he was a very canny uh promoter, and he realizes that actually a way to kind of sell Jenny Lynn's brand was to go big on the philanthropy. And and in fact, you know, her the she was a great singer by all accounts, and she was already famous, but in in terms of breaking the US, the linchpin of Barnum's strategy was her charity. And in a paper about this, um really interesting one, I'll put links in the show notes too, it says, Though charity alone does not account for Lynn's success in America as a singer, it's neither nevertheless true that this quality made her uniquely appropriate for both the American public and American critics, who saw themselves as gatekeepers of public morality. Female celebrities in America had long been expected to project a virtuous persona to the public, and fitting within gender roles had been a path to success for singers since the first decade of the American Republic. So you can see that link between uh kind of being accepted as a as a popular musician in some sense and philanthropy is there from relatively early on. And then, you know, if we trace that line through to uh another one of the great female musical philanthropists, Dolly Parton. Uh now Parton has these days become renowned, I think, uh for her philanthropy. I mean, it a few years ago, people would have sort of raised a curious eyebrow if they heard about the Dollywood Foundation or Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. Um, but she subsequently won the Carnegie Medal for her philanthropy. Um Jeff Bezos gave her a huge amount of money to just do more of the same. And I think everybody these days is kind of well aware of quite how much she does and quite how committed she is. And in fact, people became even more aware uh more aware when stories emerged during the uh early phases of the pandemic about how Parton had actually given uh quite a large amount of money to fund some research into vaccines at a um at a university, and this had actually ended up becoming one of the successful vaccines that had gone on into production. And and Parton's a really interesting one. Uh again, I think she very much uh goes back to that thing I was saying about coming from humble backgrounds, because she really did come from kind of extreme grinding rural poverty uh in America, being brought up um by a father who couldn't read uh in a large family where they had sort of no running water and all this kind of thing. Uh and she certainly talks about this as being a really big driving force behind her philanthropy and and something that has shaped her focus particularly, particularly around children and young people and literacy. So, you know, she's done incredible things really in sort of providing reading books for preschoolers and and young children around the US and and actually internationally nowadays. And you know, she's far from alone in being a high-profile musician who is known for their philanthropy as well. So some of this is kind of known during people's lifetime. So some some obvious examples. So Elton John, uh, he's very well known as a massive philanthropist. Again, you know, personal experience playing a big part in that. So um the Elton John AIDS Foundation has been around for a long time, uh, and his focus um as a gay man on uh issues around HIV and AIDS and trying to address those uh in the global south and also trying to fund uh medical research that can find improved uh vaccines and healthcare treatments. You know, he he clearly is enormously committed to it. I think that focus on the global south is something that's been around for a long time as well. So Bob Geldoff um you know was very much the template for this in the 80s, um, probably better known really as a charity and anti-poverty campaigner than than he is or was as a musician in a lot of ways. Um his career with the Boomtown Rats was pretty successful, but his subsequent career as a fundraiser and as a spokesperson on uh issues around poverty and a campaigner, um, first through LiveAid and then through subsequent things like Live 8, has made him, I think, even uh better known. Uh and other people who've sort of taken on that mantle, so Bono from U2, um, who similarly was been involved in in lots of uh those initiatives, but also set up his own uh one campaign. And and he's an interesting one, Bono, in that he he kind of epitomizes, I think, the public awareness of uh musicians as philanthropists and using their their role as spokespeople to kind of speak out on issues and and to kind of campaign, but I think tips over into that uh slight kind of self-importance that makes people a little bit sceptical or or cynical about it, and certainly I think there are plenty of examples of Bono getting fairly ruthlessly mocked. So, I mean you can just think of uh Book of Mormon, uh there's a song in that called I Am Africa, um, which is obviously poking fun at the idea of white saviorism and these these white people turning up in Africa and and deciding that they know best. But one of the lines in that is uh you know, like Bono, I am Africa. So, you know, I think that that is still uh a kind of criticism that gets leveled at uh musicians when they step into some of these issues and and try and do very kind of sincere campaigning. It's certainly something that Ed Sheeran found himself on the wrong side of when he was involved um a few years ago now with Comet Relief and did one of those videos where he went and and kind of saw issues on the ground in in Africa, and there was a lot of footage of him looking you know suitably sad about it. Uh, and lots of campaign groups said that you know this was a very kind of retrograde example of of white savorism, and it was centering him as the as the as the individual coming in, and then you know, very well-meaning stuff, like he at the end of the video uh decided that he would uh use his own money to kind of help this one child or this one group of children find somewhere to to stay. And then again, people said, well that's nice in itself, but again, it doesn't address the problem in any kind of underlying structural way, and it does run the risk of looking like white savorism, and you're just going to you know swoop out again having swept in. A bit of a different example, but also, I mean, we should acknowledge that during his lifetime and he was well known for his charity was Michael Jackson. Um, you know, he helped to organize the USA for Africa concert, the the song We Are the World, the single, all the proceeds went to charity. Um, and that's uh an interesting one in that you know it raises all these kinds of questions for musical philanthropy that you get, I guess, when an artist themselves becomes problematic in lots of ways about whether you can separate the artist from their art. You know, is it okay to listen to Michael Jackson's music these days, given what we we subsequently sort of know about him? And I guess the same thing goes for his philanthropy and the legacy of his charity. I mean, is is that tainted money in any sense? And does it kind of raise the same ethical questions that we always have about tainted money? That's too deep a subject to go into uh in in this episode, but certainly we have kind of talked about it on other podcast episodes. And then, you know, those are kind of well-known examples, and then there are some examples I think that are less well-known, particularly because people who are you know high-profile musicians have decided that they actually want to be involved uh or do things for for charity or or philanthropically, but they don't really want anybody to know about it. And there's a couple of examples here where it's only really come out after those people's deaths. So, Prince, for instance, um, you know, often kind of contrasted with Michael Jackson during their careers. Um, but it it turned out after he died, loads of people came out of the woodwork to say that actually, you know, he he was enormously philanthropic and and did lots um in and around his um his sort of hometown in his home state, but it was quite quiet philanthropy and it was very deliberately under the radar. But he he supported some really interesting causes as well. He gave a lot of money to kind of economic empowerment um in urban areas, uh, some of which focused around things like the transition to green jobs and and kind of solar power. Uh he was involved in supporting an initiative called Yes We Code, which tries to kind of teach young people to develop coding skills. He also um was clearly kind of invested in issues of racial justice, and he gave a lot to Black Lives Matter and and directly to the family of Trayvon Martin, I think, uh after he was murdered. So and and all of this stuff wasn't really known about except by the people who were involved during Prince's lifetime. And there's a a similar story, quite a sad story in many ways, about George Michael. So again, after his tragic death, many stories started to emerge of kind of pretty remarkable acts of kindness and and generosity that really painted a picture of somebody who was very, very sad and lonely in many ways, but also kind of deeply concerned about other people. So some of these were kind of considered acts of of philanthropy. So you know he gave all of the profits from the sale of um Jesus to a child, the single, uh to childline, for instance, and he was also a longtime supporter of many um HIV and AIDS organizations, including the Terence Higgins Trust. But I think even more than that, there were lots of stories of kind of random acts of giant kindness and generosity that that people found very touching. So uh after he died, um Richard Osman, the TV presenter, um, put out a tweet saying, you know, they they'd had a contestant on the TV show Deal or No Deal that Osman had been involved in producing, and and she'd mentioned on screen that she needed £15,000 for IVF treatment. And and uh George Michael picked up the phone the next day and secretly phoned the the the TV programme and just gave her the money. He also did things sort of quietly that had more benefit beyond sort of just one person. So again, bringing things back to to Liverpool, which I was talking about at the start in the context of Eurovision, George Michael actually bought the piano that John Lennon used to compose Imagine for £1.4 million from a private collector in in the year 2000 and donated it to the Beatles Museum in Liverpool. Um it had previously been on loan there, but I think there was a risk at that time of it being taken back into private hands, and he wanted to make sure that it wasn't because he said you know it's not the type of thing that should be in storage somewhere or being protected, it should be seen by people. So his interest was in making sure that piece of music history was out there for the public to enjoy. And in terms of musicians as philanthropists, I think a really interesting particular place to look as a whole genre is around hip-hop. So there's an interesting article in Nonprofit Quarterly quite recently, I'll put links in the show notes to it, about the the kind of rich tradition of giving back uh within hip hop, and particularly people kind of remembering where they've come from. Uh, and this this is a principle known as Sankhofa, uh, apparently. And this goes to what I was saying about the fact that musicians, uh, as philanthropists, maybe a Of uniquely likely to have come from relatively modest backgrounds. And I think that's particularly true within within hip-hop. And there are some you know really amazing examples of people who have done that, then kind of seeing uh it as their their responsibility to give back to where they've come from. So um Dr. Dre, the rapper and producer, for instance, is probably the kind of highest profile one of these. So he relatively recently gave a hundred million dollars to Compton High School, so in Compton in LA, where he grew up, to help fund particularly a new centre for performing arts, which is going to be named after him, not uh Dr. Dre, but his uh his real name, uh Andre, something I've forgotten off the top of my head. Uh but there are also other examples, you know, that are still significant but at a slightly lower level. So Chance the Rapper, uh for instance, uh guy called Chancellor Bennett, his real name, but um he's from Chicago and there was a a funding crisis in uh the local public schools there, and he he got involved, first of all, demanding a meeting with the state governor to discuss the issue, and that didn't go very well by all accounts, and so he decided to to kind of take matters into his own hands to some extent and to stump up his own money. So he gave a million dollars brilliantly in the the form of a giant uh novelty check, which I I like that fact as a as a detail, and to Chicago schools and then sort of challenged local businesses to to follow his lead. So I think there's kind of you know a really there's lots of other examples within the world of hip-hop, and I think there is kind of really rich uh tradition uh of giving back within that as a as a kind of culture and a community. And just a couple of other examples of notable um musical philanthropists, and and this is I should say this is you know obviously just a hand cherry-picked selection. It's by no means all of the people out there in the music industry who are generous, but they're just ones that I was aware of and thought were interesting. And and a few of these examples go to kind of personal stories. So one that's worth mentioning is the the singer and producer John Legend, who does an enormous amount uh for for uh charity and and has been known for many years to be very philanthropic, and a really kind of quite sophisticated philanthropist. So he gets involved in quite um you know difficult or challenging causes around um kind of incarceration. So he's very much involved, he's got a new project called Free America, um, which is focused on ending mass incarceration in the US. Um, he's also involved in uh things around public schooling. There's kind of uh a fund that is called LRNG Innovators, which is about empowering teachers to kind of innovate within within the education system and to sort of redesign models of learning. And he he's also uh he founded a thing 15 years ago or so called the Show Me Campaign, um, which aims to address kind of systemic issues in the US criminal justice system, um, particularly ones that that disproportionately impact uh poor minority people uh and and those who are sort of suffering existing disadvantages. And he he's done things like funding individual um or campaigns within kind of ill individual electoral races for district attorneys and kind of really highly targeted bits of of philanthropy that are very, very smart. So he's a really interesting philanthropist to look out for. Um and then just a couple of other examples because they're people that I that I quite like, so they caught my eye. One is Lynn Manuel Miranda, um, who obviously is the writer of the musical Hamilton and In the Heights, and increasingly is uh Disney's new kind of go-to person for writing songs for all of their films. And he and and his family have been giving for a long time through the Miranda Family Fund. Uh, and initially it was kind of grants to music and arts education, but they they've shifted more recently to focusing on issues around immigration and immigrants' rights in the US. And again, I think that sort of really neatly ties into that point about um people's own background in forming uh them as philanthropists when they they get success through music, because obviously Miranda himself uh is a Puerto Rican immigrant, all his family come from Puerto Rico, and he he does a lot of uh work back there and and think following kind of natural disasters has done a lot of work going back there to to help with some of the devastation around that. And a lot of his work uh in his music kind of focuses on the questions of immigrant identity and the contribution that they make to America, so it it all sort of ties in fairly seamlessly. Um and then the last one I wanted to talk about, partly because um you know it would make my kids happy, is Dua Lipa. Um so I I have to listen to quite a lot a lot of her music in the car at the moment because I don't have control over my own Spotify anymore. Um but she's really interesting, she's a uh a British uh Kosovan uh singer and pop star, but she again is sort of very much kind of uh informed by her Kosovan roots. So she's got a thing called the Sunny Hill Foundation, which um is based in Pristina and Kosovo and is focused on reducing injustice and pov um poverty and also kind of strengthening democratic values, and she's the founder and patron, and also her her father is involved as well, so there's a kind of family element to it. And I'll put links in the show notes to to places where you can find more information on all those, but they're just a selection, I think, of stories about quite how often you find that the links between musicians and philanthropy are really kind of rich and and go beyond, I think, some of the stereotypes of people, you know, cynically doing things for charity. So yeah, it's it's kind of a really interesting area to dig into more. Okay, so in the last section that's coming up in a minute, I want to talk a bit about music as a tool for philanthropy, both as a means of fundraising and then also maybe as uh a means of social protest and kind of giving voice to issues. So back in a second.

SPEAKER_04 49:53

Back where I come from, there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called Philip uh flip uh uh good deed doers.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Okay, so we mentioned in uh the section before about uh musicians as philanthropists that one of the tools that they perhaps uniquely have at their disposal is that they can use their music and their performing ability as a as a means of fundraising. So even if they're not necessarily giving their own money, uh they can help to raise funds from others, or they might be giving their own money as well, but also try to kind of uh bring more people on board. And this is again, this is one of those things where actually, when you look at it, it has a much richer, longer history than you might think. So actually, you look back at a lot of classical composers, and they they were doing kind of charity gigs all over the place and sort of fundraising things. So perhaps the most famous is George Friedrich Handel, and so he was very heavily involved with the the Foundling Hospital in London, which still exists uh today, uh or kind of it its descendants do in the form of Corum, the children's charity. And the in 1749 Handel gave a concert um to try to help uh fund the completion of the chapel uh at the Foundling. He also donated an organ, uh not like a kidney or a lung or anything like an actual musical pipe organ. Uh and uh he gave one of the the first sort of folio manuscript copies of his Messiah uh as something that they could use to to sell off uh and give the proceeds uh to the organisation. Uh and actually the the performance of Messiah that he that he f he gave the first one in in 1749 was so popular they actually had to schedule another one a fortnight later. And then after that it it was turned out to continue to be so popular that a bit like the mouse trap, it it stayed on forever or until uh Handel died at least. So he put on a performance of Messiah every year and until his death. So uh in today's money he raised about uh half a million pounds for for the Foundling Hospital. So um, you know, quite an impressive fundraiser. There were also various other examples. So Franz Liszt, for instance, when he was twelve years old, he was something of a child prodigy. He made his English uh debut at a fundraising dinner for the Royal Society of Musicians, which we've talked about already, the Fund for Decayed Musicians, and they had an annual fundraising event to raise funds for the widows and orphans of musicians. Uh apparently uh later in the same century, uh Berlioz and Georg performed at it. Uh and then wonderfully, Clara Schumann uh attended once but then uh declined to go back again because she thought it was a bit too rowdy, and everybody got a bit carried away with raising money for these widows and orphans. Um and then the other one is um Beethoven, who was by all accounts quite a surly man, but he also did do his bit for charity. So he's the premiere of his seventh symphony was given at a benefit concert for wounded Austro-Bavarian soldiers. Uh, and actually after a fire in 1812 in his favourite spa town of Baden, he he gave a fundraising concert to raise money for for the renovation and restoration, which raised a thousand florins, apparently. But uh brilliantly uh and very much kind of in character, Beethoven was very grumbly about this, and he thought they could have made a lot more, and he said it was, so to speak, a poor concert for the poor, um, which I think is a great quote. I guess the other thing to say about music and fundraising is uh it's also an interesting element in a wider phenomenon, which is the role that philanthropy played in expanding the role of women within the public sphere. So I've talked uh on on previous podcasts, or maybe on a previous uh incarnation of this podcast, about the the way in which philanthropy provided a route into the public sphere at a time when there were very few of those available to women because there it's essentially was seen as an extension of the domestic sphere out into to the wider world, and that provided a kind of foothold in which women could actually be allowed to do you know unthinkable things like speak in public or to to kind of have uh things that they were allowed to do independently from from their husbands. Um and music was important in in that, partly because musical skills were one of the things, particularly sort of middle class women and um you know uh upper class young ladies would have been taught. So they wouldn't have been taught many things, they probably wouldn't have been educated in a in in terms of kind of maths and languages and all these sorts of things, but they they might have been taught um music as as part of their their deportment. And actually that was something that they could use uh in their philanthropic work and in their fundraising work. So often they would use those musical skills uh for things like fundraising concerts as well, and then that might be part of a kind of wider involvement in philanthropy that that led those women into to the wider public sphere. I think they were also for the other interesting thing about this, I guess, is that music was one of the other things that might allow women um to enter the public sphere, probably not some of these middle and upper class women, um, because it was probably seen as unseemly for them to do so. But for working class women who were able to uh have some success working in things like the West End Theatre or in the music halls, actually uh an important part of building their profile and the sort of early form of celebrity, and they were among some of the the earliest celebrity uh celebrities, was involvement in charities, and they were a big draw at many of the sort of charity bazaars, the the big kind of fundraising events, and they were often used to bring a dash of glitz and glamour in the the same way that if you go to any charity event these days, you might have a kind of celebrity host uh comparing. But then if we're talking about fundraising and music, I guess the point at which things really take off is in the latter half of the 20th century and the development of the the truly kind of big scale benefit concerts. So maybe one of the the first of these really, or the place in which it's often thought to start was George Harrison's concert for for Bangladesh, um, which I think after meeting the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, he heard about some of the issues that were going on in Bangladesh and was kind of driven to get together a group of um musicians, and he was obviously enormously well connected through his work with the Beatles and through a lot of his session work, and they were at the song um Bangladesh, and uh had this um benefit concert which raised a lot of money, and this then sort of provided a template for lots of subsequent efforts. So there was uh UNICEF concert later on in the 1970s, um, then in the 80s, things kind of really took off. So you have things like uh Rock Against Racism, which was in some ways kind of arguably more of a um protest concert than a straightforward fundraising concert. I think this was partly and also an interesting one because it was driven by music in both a good and a bad way. It was a response to some of the uh kind of right-wing comments I think that uh Eric Clapton had made about how uh Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech had been uh had been correct, and then a whole group of musicians who wanted to distance themselves and the music industry from that and kind of make it clear that these weren't views that were widely held, set up this this benefit concert um to raise money for kind of anti-racist causes. Um but then obviously the the really big ones are band-aid uh and and live aid, so raising money um to get uh resources out to to address some of the famine in in Ethiopia, and obviously kind of live aid took place in kind of multiple places around the world and and uh a number of kind of seminal performances, again, kind of driven, as we said before, by Bob Geldoff. And then there are kind of probably fewer examples um of huge benefit concerts like that, I guess in a way because uh maybe the the world of music has become more disparate. Um there are many, many big benefit concerts going on, but I think it's difficult for anyone to kind of grab the the public attention in quite the same way these days. And it should be said, you know, there's always been some scepticism about these things as well. I think again, uh a concern that maybe they kind of commoditize charity, um, and uh it's maybe a sort of you know an easy form of charity um for the the consumers and the people watching and listening, and that actually the the engagement with the the sort of underlying issues only happens on a surface level. Uh and also that it's you know it's easy for the people being involved, then it's a form of kind of philanthropashing because they're they're able to kind of take part in singing on a charity single or or playing at a charity concert, and that then kind of absolves them from needing to do anything more to address the fact that they have lots of resources uh and you know, therefore presumably responsibilities. So I think there's still plenty of people who are kind of sniffy about this thing. And then I guess the the final thing to say on that is that the other reason maybe we're sort of seeing fewer of the big uh charity concerts around uh in some sense is that maybe there are other longer-term models that are emerging that try to kind of bring music and philanthropy together. So just you know, a few interesting examples I came across here. So for instance, um you know, social enterprise record labels. So there's one um called Sub City, which is um uh set up by Hopeless Records in the US. Uh and this is uh a dedicated record label or a kind of subdivision of a record label where it it specifically tries to kind of get artists to put out uh albums or or singles or to do performances that that are designed to raise money for issues around poverty and and other causes. Um and maybe this is where things are going. It's more of a kind of longer term relationship rather than the kind of big one-off fundraising single hit model that we that kind of became so enormous in the eighties. So that nearly brings us to the end of this meander around uh philanthropy and music. I guess the last, the very last thing I want to say, because I don't have as much to say about it as I would like, is just a little bit about what about philanthropy in music? So what about songs about philanthropy? And I I didn't want to go down the route here of kind of, oh let's think about songs that tell you about values that you could embody within philanthropy, and you know, because there are any number of those, largely because lots of songs that are about, you know, love and loss and regret focus around giving and caring and and all these kinds of things, so you can, you know, read into them uh whatever you want that would that would tell you something about philanthropy. I wanted to find find songs that were literally about philanthropy or or charity, and it's much harder to do that, it turns out. There's there's some uh some quite um strident left-wing grind core songs that have pretty uh trenchant views about international development, but they're very, very small scale, so I decided to steer away from those. The couple of examples that I that I could come with, which I just thought I'd leave you with, do sort of span through uh the historical period. So I guess one that I was aware of that I thought was flag worth flagging up was by W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. So in his Bab Ballads or Songs of a Savoyard, which are you know very much kind of Jeeves and Worcester-esque, tinkling at the ivories, uh, you know, hilarious uh songs, he's got a song there called uh The Disagreeable Man, which is uh I quite often use as an example about sort of satire about philanthropy, because it it does capture something about the the idea of the sort of disagreeable do-gooder. The um the refrain from that goes, If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am. I'm a genuine philanthropist, all other kinds are sham. Each little fault of temper and each social defect, in my erring fellow creatures I endeavour to correct. To all their little weaknesses I open people's eyes, and little plans to snub the self-sufficient I devise. I love my fellow creatures, I do all the good I can, yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man, and I can't think why. Uh I don't know how the tune for that goes, but I will do my best to find a link to somewhere where you can watch or listen to it, and I'll put that in the show notes. I guess the other examples uh that I was aware of, one is um the musical of the book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which is written by Kurt Vonnegut, um, which is actually all about um a man, uh a wealthy man who um ends up setting up a foundation, wanting to give all his money away, and actually his family kind of claiming that this shows that he's gone mad. But there are some good songs in that one um about foundations, um, just a song called The Rosewater Foundation, which has lines like, Welcome to a flowing font of truth and good and cash. If you're looking for the loot or to tutor flute or cure a rash, if you're down on lock and need a buck, we'll fund you in a flash. If you'd like to write a piece on Saint-Denis or Delacroix, if you must research the Church of Christ or works of Myrna Loy, don't be bashful, we've got a stashful, don't be timid, don't be coy. So, you know, very much kind of tongue-in-cheek take on uh philanthropic funding. And then specific musicals about Flantby, um, one that somebody made me uh aware of a little while ago. There's a musical all about um Andrew Carnegie uh called The Star Spangled Scotsman, um, which I think started life as an edender fringe show, and it's a you know relatively small-scale musical, but it has been put on elsewhere. And I think I'd like to see it actually, because it sounds really interesting. It's set apparently in the last two hours of Carnegie's life and told through the eyes of one of the steelworkers killed during the homestead strikes, which were the strikes um at the um the steelworks when Carnegie and all the people around him called in Pinkerton detectives to break the strike, and some people ended up getting killed. And it's you know it's often kind of used as one of the examples of explaining why Carnegie actually wasn't a very you know good person despite uh all of his philanthropy. So I'd be really interested to to see that. And then I guess the for me the uh the best song about uh philanthropy or charity uh ever written, or the the most incisive is uh Charity by Skun Canansey, which I don't know whether it's actually about charity as such or about a relationship, but again, in terms of the question of charity and justice, it's the closest I think somebody's ever come to setting that tension to a really good rock riff, and I'll put links in the show notes to somewhere where you can find that one definitely. And it says, you know, why do I sense benevolence? You stand tall at my great expense, thick words of gratitude, what a price to pay. Stuck in my throat I sell every word I say, but I don't want your charity twisting me round. I don't want your charity keeping me down. Now, if that proves nothing else, it proves that people reading up lyrics sounds universally terrible, so I'll stop at that point.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:31

At meeting of industrial leaders in Washington, here's Julius Rosenwald. Most people are of the opinion that the part of the man has made a fortune. That his opinion on any subject a value. Don't be fooled. I believe it. He is necessarily rich. There is ample proof to the contrary.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:03

It just remains to say uh thanks ever much uh so much for listening. I realise this has been a slightly kind of free-formed jazz improv episode, but I hope you've enjoyed it and there's some things that have provided food for thought. I'll do my best to put lots and lots of links in the show notes to things that you can read or watch or listen to, um, all about some of the stuff I've touched on briefly in the episode. If you are interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society, uh do check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com. You can follow me on Twitter at Rodri underscore h underscore Davis or at for literacy if you like the sort of history stuff a bit more. Uh, if you've got ideas for topics we could cover on this podcast or people I could interview, uh you can find an email address on the website and do drop us a line. Other than that, just like, subscribe, tell all your friends about it, leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next time. Bye.