01/05/2024
Respect the artists! 🤜🤛
📣 Long post alert! Please read all to understand the full context.
👉 I will NOT play at Apocalypse - Berlin UrbanKiz Festival .
My husband Wojtek Ż-r won't come to dance either.
A certain situation happened to me, so I want to share the information with you, my followers.
Why am I posting this? Serious organizers who care about their artists will understand my post and it will not affect my cooperation with them. I don't care about bookings from the other frivolous organizers, who will take it as an attack - it will be less waste of my time and energy in the future.
👉I always give the organizers both positive and negative feedback via private message. I think it's important to improve the quality of dance festivals, because it varies a lot. I also like receiving feedback for what I do, to improve myself ;-)
I dared to write a private message to the organizer of Apocalypse Festival - Patrick Messi - and express my opinion on his recent activities.
Instead of accepting the feedback and possibly talking to me briefly about it, the organizer decided to punish me for expressing my opinion by removing me from the DJ line-up. In response to my feedback, the organizer did not respond to any of the points.
His response was – "It's my festival, I decide about everything. I see you don't like it, you're out of the lineup." Is this the way you talk to your partners? The organizer-artist relationship should be, to some extent, a partnership. In my opinion, feedback is the most valuable thing You can receive from Your partner.
👉 DJing on parties or festivals is not a "prestige" for me. It's a side job. Even if you look at it from the perspective of an employer-employee relationship, and not as a partnership, I also do not consent to such treatment.
I give my feedback to the organisers either if am an artist, or if I am just a participant of the event. Many organisers ask for the feedback, creating special polls to receive it, some other don't make polls, but listen to the feedback, and if they don't agree they talk. But there are also some organizers that are not interested in any negative feedback at all - it's their festival and they don't care about any feedback other than "Super! Great! Amazing!". Dear dance festivals' participants & artists, do you accept and agree such approach?
The organizer did not accept private feedback, decided to punish me for it, so I decided to make my feedback public. I am doing it for the first time in all my DJ career. In a private message, I raised several issues, such as:
🔵 In the DJ Schedule, I found myself only at Douceur/Kompa room. As a DJ, I prefer more energetic and faster vibe of music - for dance styles such as Urban Kiz, Tarraxo, Kizomba. That is well known to everyone who happens to listen to me at parties, also to this organizer, who is a regular participant on my parties. I emphasized that I will play according to the DJ Shedule - styles douceur and kompa with full commitment, so the participants will be satisfied. I am professional, I play various styles. I have such music at my disposal, I also buy new music on a regular basis, I search for it. I was just shocked I did not received even a single hour through the whole festival to play in the "energetic" room.
🔵 DJs from Spain, France and Germany (Munich) do not play in the douceur/kompa room, although some of them have their own private songs in these dance styles. Participants interested in this room would certainly expect DJs there as well.
🔵 I noticed my blurry cover photo - I asked for a replacement, the organizer received a clear, professional, studio photo from me. Other artists had clear cover photos, which is why I brought it up.
🔵 I asked a question about the colors assigned to DJs in the DJ Shedule - a clear division into DJs of the 1st and 2nd categories. I also raised the issue of the size of characters on event posters. The organizer should not reduce the size of the particular characters, while making other characters huge, to make it clear to the participants which dance couple he values more or less, the same applies to DJs. It's not only about me, but also about many excellent instructors' couples and other DJs. Most of organizers make more-or-less same characters' sizes on the posters. Particular participants like different styles, value more various teachers or DJs, depending on the style they like more.
👉 That was just a feedback and some kind of my statement - I did not asked the organiser to take any actions or to make any changes (except replacement of my blurry photo to the good quality one).
I always react to actions that hurt me. If someone belittles me, I don't agree to it. I know my value, I know what I can do, I know what people say about my DJing. In such circumstances, it's not a punishment for me not to play there.
👉 I am waiting for the removal of materials containing my Image, DJ name, etc., which I also emphasized to the organizer in a reply of his "I'm removing you from the lineup", that was almost 2 days ago. If he removes me from the lineup, why is he still using my name and Image? He has no longer any law to use my Image for promotion of his festival and he knows it. He is not responding to my last messages on messenger (He reads my messages, but not responding at all).
I was first time cancelled with so unrespectful way.
He keeps ignoring my messages, ignoring that I keep asking him to stop using my Image for any marketing. At the moment of publication, I am still listed in DJs section in FB event and my face is still on the FB event cover photo. That is unacceptable. The only action that organiser done, was removing me from the "Apocalypse DJs" FB messenger group.
👉 It happens - organizers cancel bookings, mostly because the event did not sell out. Artists unfortunately often remain silent. Too often. Take in mind, that I saved the date for Apocalypse for a whole year, rejecting other proposals.
👉 Dear artists, let's respect ourselves! Don't be afraid to write about booking cancellations on the Internet, especially if the organizer constantly uses your image on posters because he thinks that no one will notice that you are gone. And if you don't tell it loud on social media why you are not there, then remember, that during the festival you will have no occassion to tell your version. If someone asks, the organizer can answer anything, tell any reason, that makes him comfortable. When you are not there, you have no voice to tell your side.
👉 There is no prestige or fun - playing or dancing at a festival where the organizer does not respect you.
I hope this post reaches as many people as possible. Share it if You dare to. If You care (about the artists) or if You don't care (about your bookings from unreliable organisers).
🎧 DJ TARRIXA 🎧
