MELE minds music's business

This is a change.

Some members of Hawaii's music community might still be mulling Tia Carrere's win in the best Hawaiian music album category at the recent Grammy Awards, but others are acquiring the knowledge and skills they need to work as equals with industry pros anywhere in the country.

The Music and Entertainment Learning Experience program at Hono­lulu Community College is where they're doing it.

The program, MELE for short, is affiliated with the music education program at Belmont University's Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business in Nashville, Tenn. Belmont provides curriculum to HCC via live interactive video, and Curb has contributed $250,000 through the Mike Curb Family Foundation to help build a recording studio at the college.

MELE is about more than technical proficiency. Audio engineering instructor John Vierra says an important part of the learning proc­ess is "understanding the roles of individuals."

"It's not just creating technical 'genius' or technical creativity, it's understanding people and being able to take on bigger proj­ects because we know we can count on each other," Vierra said.

He added that MELE also provides students an opportunity to experiment and try out ideas on state-of-the-art equipment.

"You walk through this studio and you see equipment you're going to see in L.A. (or) in New York, but when you get out in the real world, you have limited opportunity to go and say, 'I want to try this.' This is a safe area when students come in and open up their minds," Vierra said.

MELE has more than 80 students who are working on associate degree programs in music business and audio engineering. The first degree holders will graduate in May.

The courses range from the basics — MELE 101: Survey of Music Business and MELE 102: Survey of Recording Technology — to detailed coverage of intellectual properties, music publishing and studio production. The degrees transfer to Belmont, where students can continue their studies to earn a four-year bachelor's degree in music business, audio engineering or entertainment studies.

The program isn't only for newcomers to the music scene. MELE student Willsie Scott said he's been doing audio engineering part time for 20 years and got serious about it three years ago when he enrolled in the program. "From there I've progressed more in the last three years than I did in 17 years part time," he said.

He said the program debunks "a lot of the rumors that are out there (about the music business). … You learn the proper way to do it."

Scott will graduate with a degree in audio engineering in May and already has a job waiting at Blue Planet Sound, a Hono­lulu recording studio.

"The program has all the local connections and gave me the opportunity to go in and prove myself. Based on this course, and my previous experience and the internship that MELE has provided me at Blue Planet Sound as an audio engineer there, my performance there got me the job offer."

MELE STUDENT Joel Chasteen is concentrating on "the publishing side of things, maybe licensing." He wants to "help build up the Hawaiian music industry outside the traditional Hawaiian music that we're known for right now."

He plans to graduate in 2012.

The music business is full of stories about talented artists who unwittingly sold the rights to their work or overlooked the "fine print" in their contracts and received no royalties despite big sales. Chasteen said that with knowledge of copyrights and intellectual property laws, "you control your own destiny."

"If you don't understand the business and the legalities that come along with that, your career is not in your own hands. … My goal is to have that control and to be able to make music."

All this is exactly what Jim Ed Norman and Gavan Daws were hoping for in 2005 when they first envisioned a world-class music industry program for Hawaii. Daws, one of the isles' best-known authors, met Norman, the self-effacing former president of Warner Bros. Nashville, when he was writing a book on rec­ord business pioneer Jac Holzman and Elektra Rec­ords, a division of Warner Music Group. The conversation turned to the Hawaii music industry and the challenges it faced.

Norman was already involved with the music degree program at Belmont and wondered whether the idea could transfer to Hawaii. They took the idea to Ramsey Pedersen, then the HCC chancellor, and a set of objectives fell into place:

MELE would concentrate on teaching the "business" side of the business rather than duplicating the performance courses offered elsewhere. It would seek to equip Hawaii residents with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate and survive in the business and help expand Hawaii's connections with the national and global market. And, it would help generate local music of a quality that would have an impact on the world at large.

In short, MELE would bring ideas from the "big world" to Hawaii, assimilate them into the local music industry, add value through the creative input of Hawaii residents and send them back to the "big world" in exciting new forms.

INNOVATIVE IDEAS brought here by "outsiders" generally die slow and painful deaths — often at the hands of power brokers who view them as threats to their own entrenched interests. MELE escaped that fate.

Pedersen, Norman and Daws worked their way through the bureaucratic minefields and got financial support from the U.S. Department of Education and the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

The first MELE classes began in August 2007. It was the first time that Belmont University had done a co-venture with another educational institution.

"I think it was time for the idea (of MELE)," Norman said Feb. 24 at the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs' Eighth Annual Leadership Awards Dinner, where he, Pedersen and Daws were honored for their roles in launching the program.

Norman envisions a time when MELE graduates "go to the mainland and develop yet additional skills along with what they learned at MELE, and they bring all of that energy and excitement and understanding about the music industry and the way that it works … (back to Hawaii) and create businesses here that in the long run interface with … cultural activities (and) tourism."