AUSTIN, TEXAS—Seeing as how Toronto and Austin signed a “music city” alliance back in October, you’d think the 2014 South by Southwest festival would be awash in evidence of our two cities’ newly strengthened relationship.

Yet as the music portion of SXSW kicks into gear on Tuesday there’s not nearly the official Toronto presence one might expect on the streets of Austin.

Oh, there are Toronto acts everywhere at this year, as there always are: F---ed Up, the Darcys, Trust, Timber Timbre, Greys, Lowell, Saidah Baba Talibah among them.

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But the sole event actually bearing the City of Toronto stamp is a late-afternoon showcase titled “Toronto Turns Up,” featuring More Or Les, Ariana Gillis, July Talk and the Arkells (who are from Hamilton), at the Canadian Independent Music Association’s “Canada House” headquarters at Friends on 6th St. on Saturday.

That’s it.

Despite the establishment last month of a 30-member music advisory committee intended to guide Toronto in its efforts to embrace and exploit its thriving music scene in a manner modelled on that of the “Live Music Capital of the World,” only one city staff member, film commissioner Randy McLean (subbing in until Toronto’s plans to establish a music office with an actual music commissioner akin to Austin’s bear fruition) is in Texas in an official capacity for this year’s festival.

Several members of that committee are here, yes, but they came on their own (or their company’s) dime, and some of them are wondering if Toronto might not be missing the boat on the whole alliance thing.

Even Thursday night’s big “beat battle” at Avenue on Congress between Toronto’s Beat Academy hip-hop crew, led by sometime Drake producer Boi1da and featuring the rising likes of Wondagurl and Rich Kidd, and Texas’s Space City Beats mob happened of its own volition.

It was, the Beat Academy’s Toni Morgan says, a “happy coincidence” that they’d been planning a “Toronto vs. Texas” SXSW event when the Toronto/Austin alliance came into being.

As Jeff Cohen, co-owner of the Horseshoe Tavern and one of the founders of Collective Concerts, observes, Toronto sent two city councillors to SXSW last year and then followed that visit up by sending a delegation back for the Austin City Limits festival last fall that included a very enthusiastic Mayor Rob Ford.

“Five months have passed by since they signed the alliance, and there’s less going on at South by Southwest than there was when there was no alliance,” Cohen said Monday. “I think we’re missing an opportunity. The City of Toronto should have made a big splash at this year’s South by Southwest … It looks like my city dropped the ball. Both (cities) are just losing this great opportunity. Nothing’s been done.”

Cohen isn’t being a totally negative Nelly. He concedes Toronto is “making headway” with its Austin alliance, “but it’s at a turtle pace.” And that’s much the same refrain one hears from his fellow industry compatriots down here for SXSW.

“I’m happy that the City of Toronto is moving ahead with stuff like the music advisory committee and clearly it’s on their radar screen as something that should be aided and abetted and supported,” says Mike Tanner, director of operations for Toronto’s North by Northeast festival.

“On the other hand, in my North by Northeast capacity, I know how big the city bureaucracy can be and, in the interests of getting things right and making sure that proper policies and procedures are followed it can take a long time to get stuff done ….

“I think it’s kinda down to the industry to do things in a tangible way that has an effect on the street, so that you see musicians or venues or fans or other people benefitting so it’s not just a piece of paper that was signed by two elected politicians, that it actually has a meaning and an impact that people can feel.

“I think a lot of times bureaucracies like to work from the top down, but with something like this I think it might be more effective to work from the foundation up, from the actual events and the actual people and the guys on the ground making stuff happen.”

To that end, Tanner and the NXNE crew will work on their own to strengthen their long-held ties with SXSW this year to make that connection “a lot more evident and obvious” in light of the new alliance.

“We’ve been in much closer contact with them, sharing some info and some best practices,” he says. “And there may be something that comes to fruition at our festival. I don’t know yet.”

Likewise, Amy Terrill of the industry lobby group Music Canada and Toronto’s recently minted “4479: Music Meets World” music-marketing campaign will be conducting business with movers and shakers in the Austin scene on “a more informal basis” during SXSW.

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“From the industry level in Austin, there’s a lot of interest,” she says, “and I think the frustration is things move a little bit slowly. Certainly, in Toronto, it’s taken a little while to get the advisory committee set up. But there are necessary foundational pieces, and while we may wish the process went a little bit faster, the committee that Toronto has established is a fantastic committee and there’s gonna be a lot of great people on there and it’s gonna do a lot of great work.

“It’s just that some things take a little bit longer.

“I think the industry-led initiative is where the real magic is gonna happen. So I think that’s okay that that’s where we’re at right now as the city structures get established.”

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