After more than two years, the NAMM Show is returning – a few months late, but back. It was a bold and wise pivot this year, erring on the side of caution. Yes, it will be a little odd to be in Anaheim in June, for me, anyway. Yes, the show will be smaller. Yes, it will be strange to not have a summer show in my hometown of Nashville.
No, the pandemic isn’t over, but sort of, kind of, maybe a little more under control if we are lucky. Hopefully World War III isn’t starting, and a very weary planet can have a short break from madness for a while. It has been an unfortunate several years on the political, global, health, and peace fronts, and we are all ready for a break.
Now, while I understand this is all purely anecdotal evidence, I am happy to say that I have survived as a triple (soon to be quadruple) vaccinated man, having attended five music education industry events. I didn’t get sick. Four of them had trade show exhibits, and all were large gatherings. I went to the New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) and The Midwest Clinic in the final weeks of 2021 and, since January, have attended the Ohio Music Educators Association conference, plus the very large Texas Music Educators Association conference. I also attended the American Bandmasters Association convention. The guidance at the time was masks for indoor events, and fortunately for the most part people observed that.
Wearing a mask on a plane and in an airport all day sucks. COVID sucks worse. I’m down with masks if that is what it takes to ease into our new normal where hopefully this pandemic becomes endemic, vaccines and anti-viral treatments are readily available, and we can begin to rebuild all that was minimized since the beginning of 2020.
I recently attended my first big indoor concert gathering, catching Bob Dylan at The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and am now past the incubation period, didn’t get sick, and masks were not required. Given the age range of the audience, but factoring in the local percentage of Tennessee’s vaccine scaredy-cats, it is safe to guess that most in the audience were vaccinated. It was Bob Dylan, not Kid Rock. Again, anecdotal, but positive results now of five travel events and a concert while vaccinated were that I didn’t get ill. There is always the next trip.
I have attended NAMM Shows for the better part of 30 years. And at least half of them have had me coming home with a terrible cold, strep throat, or a strain or two of influenza. I caught two strains of the flu at Musikmesse one year. In 2020, I got Type A and B influenza during TMEA, just before COVID-19 hit. The running joke for decades now has been one could catch “NAMM-thrax” and get quite sick at Winter NAMM. The summer show seemed to be less of a spreader event, but there are always germs floating about at any gathering of breathing beings, so caveat emptor, right? A decade ago I spent an extra four days at The Sheraton Anaheim getting well enough to fly home. It happens.
The bottom line is I am not afraid of going to NAMM. I will take whatever precautions are under advisement. I will mask where I am asked to mask, or where instinctually it feels right, like tight spaces with large groups. At my age, outside of being in the crowd at NAMM, I don’t do a lot of late-night parties and events at the conferences, anyway.
This will be the first NAMM since my company, artistpro LLC, acquired MMR, School Band & Orchestra, Choral Director, JAZZed, and launched Modern Band Journal. It is an important show for our company to attend.
Though we mention it on the top of our website, we don’t brag enough about the fact that Musical Merchandise Reviewmagazine, in continuous publication since 1879, is the oldest and largest music industry trade magazine in the world. MMR pre-dates NAMM. We pre-date Gibson Guitars, first documented to have produced an instrument in 1894. MMRhas seen over 142 years of ever-changing trends in the musical instrument trade. From revolutionary changes like pianos that play themselves, to electricity changing how instruments and musicians who play them are heard. The list of changes since electricity are endless, let alone since computers became a common thing.
MMR has survived during a massive number of domestic and global wars. It has survived pandemics like the Spanish, Asian, and Swine Flus, and it will survive COVID-19.
As MMR has endured this long through so much, so likely will your store, your customers, your manufacturing facility, and the music products industry. Short of a nuclear catastrophe wiping us all out, music will be here as long as there are humans. Global inflation and supply issues will settle at some point. The looming vacuum tube shortage will get addressed. So far, the world is not ending, and going to NAMM to see our friends, colleagues, clients, customers, suppliers, and more is a good thing.
Our company and its editors and advertising sales executives are excited to see you in Anaheim. When our booth is assigned, we will announce the number, and hope you will stop by and say hello, if we don’t find you at your booth, first. It is time for all of our various tribes to gather again, and get on with business as “usual,” inasmuch as that is possible now.
