Your Urgent Action is Needed! SD Governor Announces Plans to Kill All Arts Funding For the State

Dear Friend of the Arts,

The arts in South Dakota need your help.

The revised budget Governor Rounds presented to the South Dakota Legislature cuts all funding to the South Dakota Arts Council.

The South Dakota Arts Council provides a primary source of grant funding to many local arts organizations and artists throughout the state. Shutting down this agency means that South Dakota would be the only state in the nation without a state arts council or state-run arts program.

If the doors to the South Dakota Arts Council are closed, I can not imagine the barriers that will need to be broken down for their reopening in the future.

The arts affect every one of our lives, every single day. Funding from the South Dakota Arts Council provides local artists and arts organizations with the financial resources needed to create art that makes our communities beautiful, programs that inspire and educate us, enhancing our lives.

Please take two minutes to help.

Write a letter or email your Legislators. You can find your Legislator contact information here: http://legis.state.sd.us/who/index.aspx

Below is a sample letter to use by simply copying and pasting into a new document.

I greatly appreciate your advocacy on this important issue.

Sincerely,
Robert Joyce
Executive Director

Dear [Legislator],

I am writing in support of state funding for the South Dakota Arts Council. I do not favor the proposed elimination of this important state agency.

If you have attended a symphony concert, community theater production, jazz concert, visited a local art gallery, or your children attend a public school, you have surely witnessed the positive impact that South Dakota Arts Council funding provides for us all.

-Last fiscal year, the state of South Dakota’s investment in the arts was 86 cents for each state resident. The return on that investment included $48 million in economic impact from programs by arts organizations across the state.

-In addition, that 86 cents for each citizen sent 26 artists to 162 schools for 231 weeks, bringing arts opportunities to 35,000 South Dakota young people.

-And that same 86 cents per person investment made $1.1 million available on a matching basis to 530 local arts organizations and other non-profit arts programs, schools, artists and units of government in every county of South Dakota.

-The arts attract a creative and educated workforce for our state, furthering economic growth. Cutting funding to the Arts Council would put hundreds of jobs in jeopardy and threaten the retention of our most precious resource, our young people.

-A typical attendee of a nonprofit arts event spends $27.79 per person, per event (excluding admission) on transportation, lodging, and other event-related costs. Non-local attendees spend twice as much.

-Tourists who visit South Dakota because of an arts related event are more likely to spend more in our state, using hotels and spending more than the average traveler.

Shutting down the Arts Council means that South Dakota would be the only state in the nation without a state arts council or state-run arts program.

At a time when our newly-elected President sees the arts as a vehicle for national change and has stimulus plans to increase support for the National Endowment for the Arts by $50 million dollars, South Dakotans may completely miss out. Without funding from the state legislature, the South Dakota Arts Council won’t be eligible for any matching funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

I trust that you will work to reinstate funding for the South Dakota Arts Council.

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]

MLK on Jazz

On the Importance of Jazz
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Opening Address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival, WPFW News (Washington), [23 August 2002]

God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.

And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.

In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Opening Address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival

Listen to John Hammond on SDPB's Dakota Midday

Listen to today's interview here. Note that the John Hammond interview begins around 26 minutes.

Blue Note Turns 70

We are greatly looking forward to wrapping up our 2008-09 concert series by celebrating the 70th Anniversary of Blue Note Records with an all-star lineup of musicians.

On Wednesday, March 25 at the Orpheum Theater, Bill Charlap on piano (musical director), Ravi Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Peter Bernstein playing guitar, Lewis Nash on drums, Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Peter Washington playing bass and Steve Wilson on alto saxophone will explore a sample of some of the most notable tunes from the Blue Note Records catalog.

NPR's Talk of the Nation will spend time today discussing the history of the record label. More information available here along with a playlist of Bill Charlap's Blue Note Picks.

Tickets to the March 25 concert are on sale now!

Obama and the Arts: "incredibly important"

President-elect Obama discusses the importance of the arts and culture during an interview on Meet the Press, December 8, 2008.

See the video here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5154432425426831376&hl=en