Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Jazz Festivals in Russia

I think that every person who writes about jazz is, this way or that, spammed regularly: there's hundreds and thousands or artists in the world, and they (or their agents) want gigs. It's understandable. But I've been getting more and more queries lately, literally drowning in dozens of queries a day -- queries of three similar types:

1. from those who bought a lousy "Jazz promoters database". I am (or, to be precise, my private e-mail address is) listed there as Yuri Saulsky, Moscow Jazz Festival. Yuri Saulsky, God bless his soul, died seven years ago, and his festival is defunct since 2000. Who on Earth happened to submit to some unhappy database my address as the late Mr.Saulsky's? And who keeps SELLING that b*s* to innocent people? Show me that person. I will do no harm. I just want to look into that person's eyes.

2. from those who bought another lousy database, where I was listed correctly as Cyril Moshkow, but -- a festival organizer. Still, looking in the eyes of the person who submitted me there is one of my priorities.

3. from those inventive and energetic ones who googled up "Jazz Festivals in Russia", found an outdated old page in Jazz.Ru portal's tiny English section, and contacted me as if I were all those festivals once listed there.

At least I could do something for those from the paragraph 3: they definitely deserved better than an outdated page, and if they had current contacts of at least ten major Russian festivals, might they as well please, please leave me alone?

So I did something that I could do without significant looks into anybody's eyes: I renewed the Jazz Festivals in Russia directory on Jazz.Ru. It is not much, still only ten festivals (out of several dozens - compare with the directory's Russian version!), but those are major festivals with English-speaking staff (which is rarely the case in Russia) and relevant Web sites (wich is also not very common,) so maybe the stream of incoming tour offers and performance queries will reduce just a tiny little bit. I cannot give jobs to musicians, but at least I can hint them who (theoretically) does!

1 comment:

Tessa SOuter said...

This blogpost made me really laugh! I always suspected those lists were fake but now I know for sure! Very witty. But also helpful!