Bled Fest have posted a blog on their website discussing, kind of, why they don’t have more diverse roster at this year’s festival:
Is there a responsibility on us or other event producers like us to even pay any attention to races, genders, etc.? Is there a quota? Let’s just roll with an estimate of 10%. If 10% of applications represent minorities, should I book 10% of acts featuring minorities? 15%? 20%? Should we specifically attempt to go outside of who submitted and the agents we work with (defined earlier as almost entirely white males) to make sure that there’s a fair % of minorities represented? and what’s fair? Do we focus more on race and gender than we do on skill, promotional value, achievement, professionalism, etc.?
I think this is a false choice. I don’t think looking at the reasons for why certain music scenes lack diversity means you need to ignore other metrics. Using phrases like “affirmative action” and “quotas” misses the entire damn point: do better than you’re doing right now. Let’s start there.