Kemet Coleman, a local musician, urbanist and co-owner of Vine Street Brewing Co., thinks Kansas City is in need of a rebrand. “The brand right now is City of Fountains, and it needs to be City of Music,” Coleman says.
Many cities of a similar size and musical significance, like New Orleans, Memphis and Nashville, have booming entertainment industries supported by their local city governments, according to Anita Dixon-Brown, executive director and founder of Creative City KC. KC has the history and talent to be a comparable tourism destination, but the infrastructure to support that has not materialized organically, despite being given the honor as a United Nations-designated City of Music in 2017, the first in North America at the time. A few months ago, New Orleans was also granted the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization City of Music designation, making it the second North American city to have the title. KC’s UNESCO program is led by the nonprofit organization CCKC.
KC’s UNESCO application process was a collaboration between Dixon-Brown and Jacob Wagner, the director of UMKC’s Urban Studies program. Wagner is now the coordinator of the UNESCO Creative Cities music sub-network for the next two years. “Kansas City of today is very different from the Kansas City we grew up in, where there were a lot more festivals, there was more consistency, more kind of permanence,” says Wagner. He’d like to see that Kansas City again.
The designation was a big deal for KC, joining 73 other UNESCO cities of music around the world, such as Caracas, Venezuela; Kingston, Jamaica; and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
In December 2022, the city of Kansas City awarded CCKC $425,000 to support its membership in the UNESCO Creative Cities network and to implement UNESCO’s eight-point music strategy.
In the Crescent City (New Orleans), officials are already considering allocating a whopping $25 million to a music strategy development. Those involved in KC’s music scene are lobbying for similar monetary support, arguing it would radically transform KC’s music industry.
Coleman, along with other local musicians, are advocating for more support from city government to make sure KC isn’t overshadowed by New Orleans. In an open letter published on Vine Street Brewing Co.’s website in January, Coleman had three calls to action: establish a Kansas City Office of Music; invest in infrastructure, meaning supporting public school music education, preserving the Jazz District, and creating artist grant programs and tax incentives for music businesses; and develop a music strategy. Initiatives would include partnerships with other cities, a music licensing program, an annual city-wide music week and positioning the Jazz District as an entertainment and tourism destination.
Some artists argue that KC doesn’t even have much of an industry to speak of but rather lots of performers working restaurant and bar gigs. “I think some of those things, like creating the Kansas City music office—which I think CCKC is starting to work on—will really build a music industry, which we actually don’t have here,” Coleman says.
Recently, CCKC presented an eight-point global music strategy to capitalize on the designation, outlining specific steps to make the program work in hopes that Kansas City would adopt it as a framework for developing the local music industry and an official Office of Music.
Kansas City Third District Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, whose district includes the 18th and Vine historic jazz district, sponsored a resolution supporting the music strategy. As the city faces a $100 million deficit in the coming years, she thinks that an investment in KC’s music industry is a prudent move. “We have a whole industry that is under-activated that could help us with this deficit,” Robinson says. “We have something that makes sense, and we want to take action on it, but we have to invest in it.”
There is movement underway. On October 30, the city passed Robinson’s resolution to make a city-wide music strategy policy that would support the UNESCO designation. The resolution has been put on hold due to concerns from musicians and others working in KC’s music scene about how some of CCKS’s proposed recommendations would operate.
The resolution directed City Manager Mario Vasquez to convene an internal working group to review the recommendations, confer with stakeholders and report back to the council within 120 days.
After the meeting, Robinson noted that at least now there was something tangible going forward. “Now we can say, ‘Let’s do these things together as a city,’” Robinson says. “That’s the first step. That’s not the final step.”
