by James M » Wed Mar 31, 2004 4:05 am
I'm sorry that was a wash for you. It doesn't make anmy sense that they not pay instructors if they're raking in the money, and especially if they want ya'll to return! I never go to music festivals, myself. We have one famous festival here in Austin called SXSW. I went for the first time this year (during spring break), but worked as a volunteer stage manager at one of the venues. The bands have two paymeny options. One is a check for $175 for the whole band, and the other is a wristband for all the members and one crew so they can get into all the other shows for free. I can tell you that I do not have any regrets not living out my dream of becaming a Rock Star.
I'm not in to the massive groups of people banging away on djembes. I have a nice small drum circle maximum 7 people. I always bring a conga and/or ago-gô, and pandeiro for variation. With African diasporic drumming in the US most people don't have any link to music traditions other than pop culture, but we do come up with interesting things. I try to lay down the grooves to lock it in something more familiarly latino sounding. I can't make it to that one any more so I organized another one, which has 4 max. Today, two others cancelled and one guy came about 30 minutes late and stayed about that long, so I was just chilling by myself for 1hr 1/2, which I really enjoyed. I brought both my congas up (on the bus to campus) which was a pain in the ass, but how can you play with soul if you don't suffer a little?