[Dixielandjazz] OKOM Festivals on the cutting edge of Marketing?

[Stephen G Barbone]

Recently, many OKOM Jazz Festivals have been expanding their musical  
offerings beyond just "trad" in order to continue as viable events and  
gain new audience.  It seems to be working.
Now they can proudly point to the fact that they are in the vanguard,  
as other musical events do the same thing in order to attract more  
audience, especially the young.
Below article excerpted for brevity.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
NY TIMES - April 18, 2008 - By Beth Schiesel
Bands of All Stripes, Keeping It Green

PETER SHAPIRO knows what people think when they hear the phrase “Earth  
Day concert.” Maybe Jackson Browne. Maybe Bonnie Raitt.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The predominantly white  
singer-songwriters who came to fame in the 1970s were among the first  
voices in popular culture to speak out on behalf of environmental  
concerns.

But now Mr. Shapiro and the other organizers of this weekend’s  
national Green Apple Festival, billed as the country’s biggest Earth  
Day celebration, want to expand the audience. In trying to draw as  
many as 500,000 people to its main events — free concerts on Sunday  
afternoon in eight cities — the festival is reaching out to younger  
people and to demographic groups that have not traditionally been  
associated with the environmental movement.

That means the Roots & Friends and Toots & the Maytals performing on  
the National Mall in Washington, along with Thievery Corporation and  
Gov’t Mule. That means Menudo and Arrested Development in Bicentennial  
Park in Miami, and Los Lonely Boys and Junior Brown at Fair Park in  
Dallas. And improbably, perhaps, that means the bluegrass and country  
star Ricky Skaggs and his band, Kentucky Thunder, at Rumsey Playfield  
in Central Park.

“We made a conscious decision to cast a much wider net than most  
people would expect, in terms of booking the artists and genres this  
year,” Mr. Shapiro, the event’s executive producer and founder, said  
in an interview recently. “We think it’s vital that the environmental  
movement appeal to what the country looks like today, and that meant  
bringing in R&B, reggae, country, hip-hop, world music.”

Or as Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network in Washington,  
put it: “We would have taken someone like James Taylor, but our real  
goal is to find groups that will bring out a younger and more diverse  
audience.” . . . SNIP TO

“Pop culture has certainly propelled the environmental movement along,  
and that’s even more true today because it’s trendy, because it’s in  
fashion,” Mr. Hart, who is scheduled to perform on Sunday in Golden  
Gate Park in San Francisco, said in a telephone interview last week.  
“Trying to reach the widest demographics seems like the right thing to  
do. I did it a few years ago in front of Grand Central on a flatbed  
truck, and there beside me was Walter Cronkite on a drum. Talk about  
demographics.”

“This kind of green awareness usually starts with young people, and  
there was a time period where the younger generation for whatever  
reason had their heads somewhere else, and now it feels like younger  
people are getting more involved in this issue again.”

For Kevin Wommack, manager of Los Lonely Boys, the Green Apple shows  
are an opportunity to raise environmental awareness among a Hispanic  
audience that has not traditionally been at the core of the green  
movement.

“With the huge Hispanic audience here, and with the boys being a  
Mexican-American band, this is just a great opportunity to make an  
impact with this group in terms of green consciousness,” he said. “All  
it really takes is motivated people who want to connect the dots and  
move this forward to a different, broader base.”