As the Black Lives Matter movement continues, the music industry is sharpening its focus on diversity and equality, but no-one is doing so quite like Big Dada. As the cherished indie launches its new era, Music Week meets label heads Victoria Cappelletti and Alex Ives to investigate their plans to bring about seismic change for artists and executives at all levels...
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arlier this year, Big Dada did something new. The label has always been experimental, filling its release schedule with original artists, including Roots Manuva, Kae Tempest and Mercury Prize-winning albums by Speech Debelle and Young Fathers. But on January 25, the label, a subsidiary of Ninja Tune, decided they wouldn’t just support innovation, they would be the change themselves. According to a new mission statement Big Dada has relaunched “as a label run by black, POC & minority ethnic people for black, POC & minority ethnic artists”. It’s a move that could impact the music industry and beyond. “Following Black Lives Matter, we all gathered to discuss what we thought could be changed,” says Victoria Cappelletti, who is one of Big Dada’s two label heads and the international marketing manager for Ninja Tune. “Big Dada is, historically, a label that has released really important records from black and POC artists in the UK. So we decided to relaunch the label in a way that would allow black and POC staff to become executives, as well as being able to champion young artists.” Currently, only 19.9% of executive roles in the British music industry are held by Black, Asian and minority ethnic people, according to last year’s UK Music Diversity Report. For staff at all levels, the figure is 22.3%. Organisations such as the Black Music Coalition and projects like the PRS Foundation’s Power Up are undertaking work to make the music industry a more equal place, but no individual label has made the kind of move Big Dada has. Alex Ives, Cappelletti’s fellow label head and Ninja’s head of physical distribution, expands further.
“For us, as a big label, it’s about looking at some of the structural issues, not just as they affect the music industry, but globally,” he says. Ives is part of the Black Music Coalition’s independent arm, and he says the organisation is working on “some very interesting and potentially impactful” activity for 2021. Yet while he and Cappelletti agree that such initiatives are crucial, they’re yet to be convinced by wider industry activity.
“There is so much to be done, and it will take a lot of time and effort,” says Cappelletti. “Sadly, we will surely realise that some of the initiatives so far were either partly or fully performative and meaningless, but hopefully the process will have reached more people and will motivate a majority to work towards effective change.”
Ives says it’s hard to tell exactly what has changed so far. “I have always been somewhat sceptical of the big, public posts of support for BLM from companies, as the proof will really be seen with time,” he states. “I have not seen many initiatives that have really made me think there is meaningful change happening – that’s not to say there isn’t,
66 | Music Week
musicweek.com
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