M.E.C.

M.E.C. MAKING THE FOUNTAIN CITY INTO A MUSIC CITY

“We’ve got to agree on the greater good of music,” Arreasha Z Lawrence says. “We need government, tourism, and music stakeholders to all come together.”

Arreasha, or “Z” as she prefers, began the Music Entertainment Council to support the music industry in Columbus, encouraging local artists and drawing external interest to grow a new field of opportunity and economic growth.

Z

“Music Entertainment Council, basically, works to stabilize, sustain, grow, connect, protect - any of that type terminology - music education and resources for anyone in performance,” she explains. “When we break music down, that’s a lot of different jobs and titles that go along with the sound that you hear on the other end of a radio.”

Z began the council in early 2020 as a monthly “Music Advocacy Academy” hosted at Everything Musical, building on the MuSec group, created in 2012 to support young musicians, and the Music Legend Awards, begun in 2016 to show appreciation to artists, and those in entertainment both locally and nationally.

She then teamed up with Georgia Music Partners and the global music consultancy organization Sound Diplomacy. They work together to support the music industry in Columbus. One short-term plan at the state level is to lobby the Georgia Senate in January 2022 to extend and modify the 2017 Musical Production Tax Credit, which is intended to incentivize companies to produce content within Georgia.

After months of behind-the-scenes work, she met formally with Mayor Skip Henderson in August to begin exploring what might be possible for the organization. The first step is an economic impact assessment (or audit), which will take up to 18 months.

In 2018, nearby Huntsville, Alabama partnered with Sound Diplomacy for a similar audit, leading to the creation of a full-time Music Officer position for the city – the first in the nation – alongside the development of a new amphitheater.

“[Doing the audit] is an awesome experience,” she says. “I’ve experienced it through reading other studies

and other results, but I’m just ready to see the results of this area.”

When it comes to the history of music in Columbus, “everyone knows Ma Rainey,” she says, but other famous music industry professionals from Columbus are less well-known, such as Chet Atkins, Dallas Austin (whose credits include Boyz II Men, TLC, Madonna, and Pink), Rozonda Thomas a.k.a. Chilli from TLC is also from Columbus and producer Devin Johnson, who has worked with Nicki Minaj and Rihanna.

“I like to go all the way back, like go way back,” she adds. “We’re home to the second orchestra in the United States of America.”

The Columbus Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1855, only 13 years after the New York Philharmonic Society. The historic marker outside RiverCenter says Columbus was chosen for having “built for herself a reputation of culture.”

In 1987, Columbus would start a different reputation when, three weeks after the Beastie Boys performed alongside a 20-foot-tall inflatable phallus, an “antilewdness” ordinance was passed to prohibit certain suggestive content or language at any performance attended by minors. Over the next few years, LL Cool J, Too Short, Bobby Brown, and Gene Simmons were charged under the law. After cancelling a planned concert, rapper Ice T name-dropped the city on his October, 1989 album “The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech… Just Watch What You Say!”

Ordinance No. 87-32 remains in effect – and controversial - today. Regardless, the opportunities ahead seem endless to Z. “Hey,” she wonders, “why don’t the first and second orchestras of the United States put something together? What about productions and festivals, things of that nature?”

Names From Left to Right: Oz Roberts, Dr. Matthew McCabe, Councilwoman Mimi Woodson, Gary, Wyndhem Ennaemba, Travis Steele, Breanna Maclin, Atty Shawn Pullum, Tacara Hemingway, Dr. Catrina Pullum, Ajai People’s, Felicia Hamilton, Ashley Cooper, Arreasha Z

More events, she argues, would bring more tourists and help the city hold on to the talent of graduates from Columbus State University’s region-leading art programs, causing ripples of broad, sustained economic growth.

Z invites people to join at MECColumbus.com and to follow the group’s efforts on Instagram and Facebook under Music Entertainment Council.

Through this collaborative effort, she hopes to bring Columbus more jobs, more tourism, and more opportunities to listen so that one day “people are booking flights directly to Columbus.”

She imagins what it will be like to look back on the MEC’s work years from now, after Columbus has grown into a musical and cultural powerhouse she knows it can be.

“Wow,” she says we will say. “We worked hard, we worked together, and look at us now.”