January is Music Month!
2025 is the 3rd annual Portland Music Month, a new kind of music festival to light up the city, engage local businesses in the support of our music ecology, and support local artists and venues. 30 venues. Hundreds of shows featuring unique acts. City-sponsored and business community-supported, and threatened by this latest blast of Covid.
If you are comfortable heading out to a show, check out the calendar of shows and browse by ear to find new artists you’ll want to see. $1 or more of every ticket sold goes to our Echo Fund musician grants.
If you are hesitant attend a show or want to boost your support, then please make a donation of any size directly to support our Musicians Grant fund to support creative projects by independent artists. Support local Portland musicians as much as your means allow and your local music scene matters to you. All donations are tax-deductible, and go directly to our Echo Fund.
photo by Beth Olson
MusicOregon is a 501(c)(3) creative empowerment program established to recognize, re-imagine, and empower the independent music community in the Oregon. We work in coordination with the 501(c)(6) trade association MusicPortland, which advocates for music supportive policy, infrastructure, and economic opportunities for local musical artists and businesses. Our two organizations work in parallel to support both the art and business of music.
While “Arts and Culture” funding supports many types of culture, popular music has existed in the margins as a for-profit cultural activity that has been more self-sustaining than some traditional arts. In a rapidly growing city and with a radically altered revenue model, popular music is now an asset that now requires intentional support to survive.
We are the first charitable organization dedicated the support of Portland-area independent music culture.
The Mission
As a program of MusicOregon would support local independent music creators and unsupported BIPOC music entrepreneurs through artistic, cultural, educational and public interest programs. We are committed to empowering creative musical excellence, professional development, fiscal support, and community engagement, with equity and inclusion a central priority.
RECOGNIZE
Ongoing assessment of our creative culture to identify equity deficits that limit opportunities or access for certain communities or genres
RE-IMAGINE
Create new systems that remove creative or access impediments.
EMPOWER
Support BIPOC leadership to create new sustaining solutions and resources.
The Initiatives
MusicOregon plans to create programs and funding opportunities appropriate to musicians/creators in every genre as well as for local music businesses because they collectively power our independent music culture. We commit to BIPOC leadership and staffing for many of these planned programs to keep equity at the center of our work.
Below are some of the critical program areas that we intend to support through MusicPortland Bridge; our initial fundraising efforts will be focused on capacity building, so we can create the infrastructure necessary to support the following programs:
MusicPortland LEAP
We have already established a BIPOC-led council (Leadership. Equity. Advocacy Project - LEAP) to assess and identify institutional impediments to inclusivity and equitable opportunity within our music ecology. From public policy, insurance redlining, unequal performance pay, lack of access to opportunity, lack of access to capital, etc. the Council will identify, document, and devise programs to mitigate problems and to hold the music community accountable to equity goals.
Entrepreneurial Equity
The greater Portland music business community is disproportionately large for a city its size; more than 700 individual music enterprises (excluding venues). But music business and venue ownership and advancement opportunities for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and women lags significantly. Professional development, mentorship, access to capital, will create new pathways to economic mobility for aspiring minority music entrepreneurs in our area.
Grant Hub for Musical Creators
Because independendent popular music is not created in the same way that dance or theater productions or singular programs of music presented for a limited time after months of preparation, it is difficult for independent artists to successfully apply for traditional arts grants. MusicPortland Bridge seeks to create grant programs specific to this specific creative endeavor that can support creative, production, promotional or touring expenses to support an artists creative career.
Portland Music History Project
Connecting our cultural heritage as a city of music is essential to unite us as an intentional music community now and in the future. This includes reckoning with and telling the story of the racist mistreatment of Black music communities in our city. [Read more]
Creating a multimedia document (in print, film, audio, and plaques in situ throughout the city) can bind our collective sense of the musical thread that has culturally defined Portland and our residents for a century. We need to document how popular music is inspired by Portland, created by Portland, and uniquely for Portland. We have already had conversations with multiple music historians and documentarians as well as with Travel Portland, who is eager to support this idea.
Photo below: Reed Ricker
Contact
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
Email
contact@musicoregon.org
Phone
(503) 320-5462