TRNSMT music festival criticised for lack of diversity after headline announcement
- Published
Music fans at the 2023 edition of TRNSMT, held on Glasgow Green
Scotland's biggest music festival "needs to work harder" at presenting diverse line-ups, according to performers and industry workers.
Only six of 21 acts announced so far for the 2024 edition of TRNSMT feature women.
Now a number of industry workers and performers have called for greater representation at the Glasgow Green concerts.
Organisers DF Concerts stated that more acts would be announced in the future.
TRNSMT has been running since 2017 but only one women has been involved in headlining the festival - Pulp keyboardist Candida Doyle in 2023.
Deni Smith performed at TRNSMT in 2019, where she appeared on the "Queen Tut's" stage, a secondary stage devoted that year to emerging female talent.
However, the singer-songwriter believes that the summer festival needs to offer more than "tokenistic" gestures to help emerging talent.
"I don't think the TRNSMT bill is representative of what's happening with local, grassroots music," she said. "It's been like this for years with the festival, there is no diversity and it's dominated by white males.
"I don't mean anything against those acts, but festivals have a massive opportunity to help showcase different backgrounds. That can then be inspiring for other acts."
The 2024 event will be headlined by Liam Gallagher, Gerry Cinnamon and Calvin Harris.
Scottish singer Carla J Easton said she was not surprised at the gender imbalance of TRNSMT
Another Scottish singer, Carla J Easton, told BBC Scotland News that she "wasn't surprised" that the acts announced so far were heavily in favour of males.
She suggested that the likes of Spanish festival Primavera showed that a more diverse bill could be accomplished.
"In 2023 we can see other major festivals sign up to initiatives such as Keychange, external or clearly state a commitment to gender-balanced festival line ups, like Primavera," she said. "We should be asking 'why are TRNSMT not doing the same'?
"Why is the one mainstream music festival in Scotland by, arguably, the biggest music promoter in Scotland, not committed to gender-balanced festival line-ups?"
Gig promoter Halina Rifai told BBC Scotland News there were a number of more diverse acts who would be suitable to headline TRNSMT.
Miley Cyrus performing at Glastonbury in 2019
She said: "Homogenous headliners comprising mostly white straight men fail to reflect the diversity of talent and audiences out there today.
"While changing long-standing industry bias overnight can be unrealistic, festivals can set gradual yearly improvement targets for booking more women, Black and People of Colour, and LGBTQ+ artists.
"That is not just for positive social impact but for commercial success with underserved markets and TRNSMT still needs to work harder on this.
"These artists may well have been approached and not been available, but headliners may include Paramore, Lana Del Rey, Cardi B, Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus or Dave."
A spokesperson for TRNSMT said: "Our announcement this week is just 21 of around 80 acts across the full bill. We're still in the process of curating the whole line-up and will have many more updates to share in the coming months."