[Dixielandjazz] Re: "Trad" Jazz in the UK

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

     If given enough money, and lots of volunteers and expertise and 
hard work, could we send in Barbone, Wiggans, Cullum, and Company 
into (say) St. Louis, and over a period of five years, reverse the 
trend, create a demand, revitalize traditional jazz, put 20 new OKOM 
bands into that area with weekly gigs and living wages, and energize 
the people of the area, both black and white, young and old, into 
going to local venues, appearing on radio, TV, the internet, and 
newspapers and magazines?


You hit it dead on Dan, and as Steve is always saying, You gotta take it to 
the people constantly, they don't have a clue where to find it, and most of 
them don't even know they are looking for it because they don't know what it is.  
 A lot of the success also depends upon the reception of the media (which 
will balk at first) becasue they don't know even though they would like all the 
merchants in the area to beleive that they do know what the people want to see 
and hear.  ( poppycock)  They are gong to sell the event folks and merchants a 
bill of goods to help them sell what they are selling, (Smooth Jazz these 
days)  the advertisers money makes it all flow, and or the Sponsors money.   How 
it is used to acheive the desired results for all parties is the tricky part.  
 Everyone wants to walk away from an event thinking they got great exposure 
and benefit for their time and money.


Most Jazz Societies are not selling anything and or marketing anything, they 
are having a party with lots of music under the auspices of preserving history 
and having a social event for themselves and their close circle of friends 
and supporters on the inside.   Since they are mostly non- profit they believe 
that they don't have to make a profit.   They are wrong in this assumption, if 
they can't make a profit for the sponsors who put up the money for the event 
then they will not attract sufficient numbers of people to justify spending the 
money to put on the event.   Heck even the volunteers will start to disappear 
when they see the organization continue to lose money and cry poor every 
year, begging  for more free labour and donations and cheaper artist fees to put 
on the event.


  If you can accomplish this then you have won the promotion game and will 
continue to attract sponsors who will be all too willing to throw money at you 
for the next event.  Don't show them numbers that were exposed to their 
products and they will ignore you for years, it's all about marketing and 
understanding the marketing game enough to get sufficient players in the game to make it 
a viable program.

Steve's group and mine as well play mostly non Trad. Jazz venues and events, 
and are amazed at our reception as being something new to the audiences at 
these generic mass attended events, who are coming to the EVENT to see and be 
seen at THE EVENT.

They then discover our music and like it and always want to know where else 
we are playing so they can come and hear it again.  We know it is working by 
the numbers of CDs we sell, T-shirts etc. to folks who never heard of us before 
attending that event.

   When I can play a show and sell enough merchandise to the audience who 
never heard us before to make five or six times as much money as the event 
promoter wants to pay me for a show I know that I know more about their game than 
they do.

When I have played a few such events in a market area I can comfortably go 
promote my own shows and sell tickets in sufficient numbers to make more money 
than I can by playing for the reduced budgets of small nightclubs and Dixieland 
style events.

I would never rely on the OKOM or Dixieland audience exclusively to make 
enough money to pay my large band.  I am convinced however that there is indeed a 
large viable audience out there in the hinterlands and the major Metropolitan 
areas to turn this music around again and make it very popular.   

The biggest obstacle I find is the mind set of the folks that are in charge 
of putting on these events, both OKOM & Non OKOM they are primarily amateurs 
who did it once and it seemed to work so they never changed anything and insist 
upon doing it the same way all their lives or at least as long as they are in 
charge of the events.  If they did not lose all the money, they figured they 
did everything correctly and can do it forever the same way, It simply is not 
so, you have to stay sharp on your promotion and out promote so many other 
diverse events going on around you all the time.

You need to know why your event worked and was successful, and just as 
important if you have one that loses, you need to find out why it lost before you 
try to do the next one if you still have the stomach to try it again.

This is not as easy as it looks when it works well and is successful, it does 
not matter whether or not the staff is volunteers or paid professionals, 
somebody needs to know what is happening and how to get to a decent and reasonable 
bottom line to insure the success of the idea and the event for years to 
come.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins