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This month’s article was inspired by a tree house. Yep...you heard me right…a tree house. You see, my 8-year-old grandson, Garrett, and I have an ongoing project out on the Bruno ranch. I say ongoing because my goal is to have it completed before he leaves for college.

Last week we were working on the tree house between breaks, (you just can’t work on a tree house without stopping to throw a few balls or shooting a few baskets), and I noticed that Garrett was imitating everything I did. If I used my level I would hear, “ Poppa let me try the level”. If I used my drill… “Poppa let me try the drill”. If I put in a screw… “Poppa let me put in the next one”. He’s “all boy” and wants to do everything I do, which is quite normal and is also how he learns.

The same applies for little girls. The wedding chapel, in which our church is worshipping, until our new building is completed in November, has a little room just for little girls. The room is painted like a dollhouse and has little tables with tea sets. Little girls can use the room for birthday parties and act like big girls.

Children’s modeling what they see is how they grow into adults. They don’t have inner instructions to go by and they must take from the world what they need to survive in society.

If you can model to your children what you believe they need in the world, the odds are they will follow your lead. If you merely offer lip service and don’t do-as-you-say, your actions will speak volumes more than your words.

The way this applies to Southern Gospel Music is really quite simple. We have many, many artists that are just starting out. To me, they are just like children, innocent, trusting, vulnerable and impressionable.

If any of us treated our children the way our industry treats young artists, we would be in prison for child abuse.

I believe one of the main reasons our industry is in such dire straits is that we have failed miserably as role models. How can we expect our youngsters to grow into seasoned professionals without teaching them the correct way to do it? They see a “gobbledygook” of nonsense that we mistakenly call a music industry and say, “Oh, that’s how you do it…here, let me try that”.

The biggest threat to our industry right now is the totally absurd area of radio promotion. It is a cancer that has overtaken our industry. There are jackleg radio promoters in every area of our country preying on our youngsters. Unless they are stopped in their tracks, we are doomed to failure.

Our youngsters are being taught that this is the pathway to success. They put a group together, find a charlatan that will take their money, make a cheap recording, put it on a compilation and send it to radio. Kind of like me telling Garrett to take my circular saw and cut some wood….IDIOTIC!!!

I’m telling you we can put a stop to this in one felled swoop by reducing our chart spots. I’d like to reduce it to a top twenty, but would be happy to settle for a top forty.

The next step is to reduce the charting stations to include only those stations that are getting the job done correctly. In reality, we only have about 15 or 20 really good radio stations.

This may seem like a drastic step, but in reality it is the same as me telling Garrett that he can’t use my circular saw until he is older and bigger and has learned the correct way to use it.

Competing for a spot on this chart would wake up many artists in our industry, and would make us better for it; after all, it’s about raising the bar and striving for excellence.

The sad thing is that the few people that could actually affect this change are more interested in advertising dollars than the future of Southern Gospel Music.

Another area, which causes me great concern, is the musical ignorance of many of our artists. We are riding on a merry-go-round of musical mediocrity. Once again we have failed to provide suitable role models for our youngsters and we are paying the price. Many of our so-called professional artists don’t have a clue about music. While I will grant you that there are other genres of music that have artists that are musically challenged, SGM holds the world record for having the most artists that don’t know “diddily- squat” about music.

In an industry that is centered on music, there are only a handful of artists that actually know what they are doing. What kind of example is this to our youngsters? Most of what they see are artists that scream and growl, and sing incorrectly, and off pitch and out of time.

In my view it is time to face the music, literally, and stop rewarding mediocrity. We need to teach our youngsters, by example, that SGM is the greatest music in the world and we have a responsibility and duty to perform it correctly.

There were about 1000 booths at this year’s NQC, yet less than 10% of that was actually represented on the main stage. What that tells me is that the majority of the artists in our industry are the new kids.

Now, we can continue down this road of “phony-baloney-good-time-charley”, or we can put our heads and hearts together and start teaching these kids how to do this the right way. Either way we will reap the reward.

To me, the solution is as obvious as the nose on my face. Every year NQC lasts for 6 days. Each day at 10:00 have a class, free of charge, specifically dedicated to teaching music. I know I would be glad to teach this class, and I know others who are eminently qualified to do so. Can you imagine the positive effect this would have for our industry over the next several years?

Leadership means leading. If our industry leaders weren’t so concerned about the almighty dollar and were more concerned about our future, they could think of these things also.

It’s time for them to get their noses out of their wallets so they can see that we have an industry that could be successful if we start teaching our new kids instead of exploiting them.

I attended quite a few industry meetings while at NQC. I found them all to be similar, industry people talking about all our problems and doing nothing.

I was asked to speak, and was surprised to find that most everyone agreed with me. So I plan to continue pressing the issue this next year and voicing my opinion. I urge you to join me in defending these principals and sharing with me your thoughts as to how we can begin implementing some of these ideas.

The key is dialogue. Nothing will ever be accomplished until we can get enough people talking about it and sharing ideas. Eventually the powers that be will have to acknowledge the problems we face and take steps to correct them.

I am especially interested in your comments this month.

God Bless You,

Nick Bruno
http://www.songgardernmusic.com
http://www.nickbruno.com

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