Response to request to perform for FREE

[WOMEN IN JAZZ SOUTH FLORIDA, INC.]

Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Dear Festival Director,

I so appreciate being considered for performance at your event. However, I live in Florida. I was unaware that this was to be a FREE performance, when I paid $10 to register and submit my materials.

I am the founder and executive director of WOMEN IN JAZZ SOUTH FLORIDA, INC. We've been in existence since March 2007 and got approved for our 501(c)(3) status on April 26, 2009. However, we do not expect our artists to perform for FREE. This is counter-productive to our mission statement. The purpose of our organization is to promote women musicians, globally. We have offered for FREE a radio show featuring the music of women composers for the past year. But we only present events that PAY our musicians.

So, you will understand why I must decline your offer. There is no way I can pay to come to your city [up North] to work for $25. I get paid $750 for my pianist and me to do our presentation of WOMEN IN JAZZ. I get paid $1,500 minimum for a quartet performance.

I am 61 years old and really not in need of "exposure", the keyword for organizations looking to exploit the talents of musicians. There needs to be an end to this thought process. Most musicians cannot afford to perform everywhere for FREE. It would be good if musicians got a FREE ride when it comes to housing, utilities, auto, gas, food, etc., but we don't. I'm not being funny, here. I'm being realistic.

Music is my profession, not my hobby. The musicians that choose to perform for FREE are usually young and fledgling and have little understanding of the value of their talent. It would be so helpful if organizations like yours would consider getting sponsorship or grant funding to PAY the musicians you recognize as talented enough to perform at your events.

Thanks again for your bid of confidence. I trust you will have a successful event.

All the best,
Joan Cartwright
www.divajc.com

[Suzanne Brooks]

Greetings:

There are a few venues, really situations, in which I will perform without being paid, as I did with the show I put together for people who suffered losses and displacement because of Hurricane Katrina, but not many. As a lifelong civil/human rights activist, in addition to being a music and literary artist, I have helped everyone I could--which has cost more than I probably should have paid, though I have no regrets. The bottom line is that, like many others who have done similar work or who have devoted their lives exclusively to the arts, we cannot help others more than we help ourselves or we will find ourselves increasingly impoverished, homeless, without medical care, and partly as a result, no longer employed in the endeavors we love most.

It is one thing to ask a novice who needs experience to perform without payment during the time the experience is itself a form of payment. It is also a different thing to ask wealthy celebrities to donate performances, when by doing so they gain good will which is beneficial and does not lessen their economic circumstances. For the rest who are working musicians, to expect us to perform at our own expense, such as travel/food/use of equipment, is exploitation. Music is both an art and a business. Without the resources, the profit derived from the business side of it, there is no possibility for the artist to survive. Money has to come from somewhere to make survival possible. Those artists that cave in and habitually perform without being paid corrupt the business leading to dimunition of income for the working musicians who are the backbone of the industry.
Nobody buys what is given away for nothing.

Suzanne Brooks
The Jazz Generation