Slash report — season 1: the selection process

What was our target?

Based on European Music Incub­at­or and our aca­dem­ic mon­it­or­ing, the main tar­get-group of SLASH 1 con­sisted of indi­vidu­al musi­cians defined pro­fes­sion­ally as “emer­ging musi­cians” and “pro­fes­sion­al”. We also ref­ered to the aca­dem­ic defin­i­tion of “ordin­ary musicians”.

An “emer­ging musi­cian” is someone who is in the early stage of his/her career, someone who has been scouted by man­agers, agents, pub­li­cists, or record labels, but hasn’t yet estab­lished a sol­id repu­ta­tion amongst fest­iv­al and ven­ue pro­gram­mers, media and, of course, audi­ence. The term “emer­ging artist” is often used for the young artist, but can also apply to someone who’s made a career change or recently decided to pri­or­it­ize art career (that’s why we did­n’t ask for the age in our applic­a­tion form).

A “pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian” is someone whose music is the primary source of income, whatever the ori­gins of the source (per­form­ing on stage, stu­dio, com­pos­i­tion, licens­ing, teach­ing, etc.)

An “ordin­ary musi­cian” is neither rich nor fam­ous (concept out­lined by Marc Per­ren­oud, doc­tor of social anthro­po­logy at EHESS –Par­is). An ordin­ary musi­cian is defined by career instabil­ity and the neces­sity of doing more than one job as well as the way they per­ceive these prac­tic­al­it­ies (as releg­a­tion, or in hope of future recognition).

Then Slash selec­ted indi­vidu­al musi­cians on both artist­ic and career devel­op­ment cri­ter­ia. Here are some examples of cri­ter­ia, which should be spe­cified later on:

1. Artist­ic criteria
Abil­ity to com­pose, pro­duce, arrange
Hav­ing (or tak­ing part in) a pro­fes­sion­al music project
Abil­ity to per­form dur­ing inter­na­tion­al show­cases festival
Hav­ing a solo/duet music project
“Being able” to per­form dur­ing an inter­na­tion­al show­case festival

2. Career development
Early-stage of career
Mak­ing a liv­ing out of music
Career instabil­ity
Con­certs dur­ing the past year
Media and social net­works coverage

3. Genre diversity: 50:50 male/female
Upload the cri­terion grid

THE RESULTS

After a month of online applic­a­tions, we received 62 applic­a­tions and finally chose five. Here is a sum­mary of the applic­a­tions received.

High-qual­ity female candidates
While there are twice as many male applic­ants as female applic­ants, we find that female artist apply with con­fid­ence that they meet the cri­ter­ia. Their applic­a­tions are bet­ter presen­ted. This is why we have selec­ted for out of five women.

A major­ity of French candidates
Almost half of the can­did­ates are French. This is a very import­ant num­ber which can be explained by the fact that Trem­polino, France, is the car­ri­er of the Slash pro­gram and by the absence of offi­cial European part­ners. It takes time to build a rel­ev­ant European net­work. That said, 21 nation­al­it­ies are rep­res­en­ted. And we were able to count on the Gig­mit plat­form, which helped us to dis­sem­in­ate the call for applic­a­tions, and also part­ners from the Music Cit­ies Net­work such as Pro­mus who were able to dis­sem­in­ate the open call to the right tar­get. This is why, in the final selec­tion, there are two Danes.

A diversity of music­al styles
While all music­al styles are rep­res­en­ted, we find that rock, pop, folk and elec­tro are prom­in­ent. This can be explained by the pro­gram­me’s tar­get audi­ence, which favours artists who can per­form alone on stage and there­fore be in a gui­tar-voice, machine-voice con­fig­ur­a­tion. Urb­an music is under-rep­res­en­ted while it is boom­ing in terms of audience.

A great Slash 1 promotion
4 women, 1 man, 2 Dan­ish, 1 Span­ish, 1 French, 1 Eng­lish, folk, pop, nu-soul, psy­che­del­ic pop, and neo-clas­sic­al: a great diversity for this pro­mo­tion of sea­son 1 of Slash Program.

Dis­cov­er all the artists on this link.