[Dixielandjazz] Sacramento Music Festival

[Jim O'Briant]

jcrhhi at aol.com wrote:

> Regarding Jim O'Bryant's comment ...

Spelling is close, at least.

> ... that he prefers to go to festivals that offer more trad rather 
> than less...I don't know of any festival that offers more trad 
> and swing than our festival in Sacamento.  

Trad is one thing. Swing is another. 

My own preference is for more trad and less swing. In my experience, the
Sacramento Festival has been the other way around (not counting the 25-30
bands at the 2011 festival which were neither trad nor swing). Nothing wrong
with that, but that's not what I want to hear.

> The RV situation is a different matter. [snip the details] ... we 
> have not done well regarding RV parking.  However, we can 
> only do what we can do.  

I understand that the cost of having venues at CalExpo, and thus having that
facility for RVs, was extremely high, and I understand why it's no longer a
part of the festival. But that decision has also caused many RVing jazz fans
to bypass Sacramento.

> We cannot solve every desire that certain jazz fans may have, 
> including cheap housing...

Nobody said anything about "cheap housing." But with "one day only"
scheduling for many bands, the festival has given out-of-town attendees a
choice between (1) paying for multiple nights in a hotel, (2) attending for
one day and missing many favorite bands, or (3) spending the same amount for
one day at another festival and hearing more bands that they want to hear.
We've chosen option 3.

> we cannot spoon feed great jazz to people who don't 
> want to pay to hear it.  

Last time we paid to hear it, we couldn't hear it. The electrified blues
band in the tent across the street drowned it out.

That same year there was a supposedly "all trad" venue -- but whoever
scheduled the bands for that venue wasn't told that it was supposed to be
all trad.

> If you love the music and want to hear it, you have to 
> get yourself to the festival and buy a ticket.  

That's exactly what we do -- at festivals that are really trad festivals.
That's what we want to hear, and that's where we choose to spend our money.
We choose NOT to spend our money to support rock, blues, county, zydeco,
funk, and other non-trad styles. (We can hear all of that on radio, TV & the
Internet. Even when it's free, we STILL don't listen to it.) Some other
festivals are now including some non-trad, non-swing groups. We don't attend
these sets either; in fact, we've cut back our attendance at some other
festivals to just one day, for precisely this reason. Our feedback forms
tell the festivals why.

The Sacramento Festival has decided that traditional jazz and swing are not
capable of supporting a viable festival, so they are trying to become all
things to all people. But don't expect everyone to agree, don't expect
everyone to like the direction you've chosen, and don't expect everyone to
attend.

Jim O'Briant
Gilroy, CA