Reggae Festival E-Guide: Upcoming Reggae Festivals
Monday, July 19, 2004 | Vol. 1 No. 12
(c) 2004 Copyright RBA Publishing, LLC

Greetings [[name]],

Festivals & Fun
* Reggae Festivals This Week
* Cooking Tip From The Caribbean Cove: Jamaican Flavored Burgers
* Fun & Games: What's Patois for outstanding dreadlocks?
   (for answer, see below under Fun & Games)
The Business of Promoting Reggae
* News & Offerings: Israel's 1st Reggae Benefit, ROTR Sold Out & Speak to Reggae Fans
* Ask A Question: How can I create a musical focus for my band?
* Marketing Tidbit: Email Etiquette - Save time with email templates for your business
* About Reggae Festival E-Guide and Contact Us

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Reggae Festivals This Week

Festival listings are believed to be correct. Please
contact the promoter directly for more information.

Sunday-Sunday, July 18-24 (7-days), 2003
Reggae Sumfest
Montego Bay, Jamaica
www.reggaesumfest.com
Hotline: 876-953-2933

Friday-Saturday, July 23-24, 2004
Irie Vibes Roots Festival
Handzame (Kortemark), Belgium
www.greenforward.be
Hotline: 0032 475658079

Friday-Saturday, July 23-24, 2004
Reggae in Wulf
Augsburg/Friedberg, Germany
www.reggae-in-wulf.de
Hotline: +49-821-5080851

Friday-Saturday, July 23-24, 2004
Reggae Sun Ska Festival
Cissac, France
Hotline: (0033)556 73 91 14

Friday-Sunday, July 23-25, 2004
KingTubby Memorial Festival
53520 Nürburgring, Germany
www.kingsfield-production.com
Hotline: 0049 (0) 172 446 74 74

Friday-Sunday, July 23-25, 2004
New England Reggae Festival
Charlestown, Rhode Island, U.S.
www.newenglandreggae.com
Hotline: 401-331-7910

Saturday, July 24, 2004
Jamaican Reggae Festival
Karlsruhe, Germany
www.jamaicanreggaefestival.com
Hotline: +49 (0) 175 63 25 199

Are you a reggae festival promoter? Post your festival at
www.ReggaeFestivalGuide.com/post_festival.html

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Cooking Tip from the Caribbean Cove
Jamaican Flavored Burgers
(c)
www.TheCaribbeanCove.com

Summertime burgers hot off the grill can be spiced up by adding wet jerk
seasoning to your standard repetoire of condiments. Just spread a little
jerk seasoning across the top of your burger before adding tomato, lettuce
and mustard, or your favorite toppings!

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Fun & Games

What's Patois for outstanding dreadlocks?

"Gorgon"

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Reggae Festival Guide News & Offerings:

Israel's 1st Reggae Festival Benefit: Organizer Needs Your Help
Next summer in Israel, a Reggae Peace Festival is being organized to bring the
healing message of reggae to the holy land. Proceeds will go to organizations
such as ones which work with Palestinian and Jewish youth together in summer
camps. Kids arrive hating one another, and leave best of friends.
We need your suggestions, interest/support and sponsorships.
Contact Island Roots Galambos: 707-442-3857 | P.O. Box 4576, Arcata, CA 95518
Email:

Reggae on the River tickets for August 6-8 are sold out.

Speak to Close to 2,000 Reggae Fans by placing information
on your business in this E-Guide. For details please visit:
www.ReggaeFestivalGuide.com/eguide.html

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Ask A Question
How can I create a musical focus for my band?

By Bob Baker

Focus. It's not just something you do with a camera. The kind
of focus I'm talking about can be one of the most powerful
weapons you use to attract fans. Through the magic of focus, you
can transform your musical identity from one that is meaningless
and forgettable to one that screams for attention.

When you have a strong musical focus, you position yourself as
an artist that fills a specific niche and caters to a well-defined
audience. The only thing is, most artists don't do this. The
average songwriter, for instance, in an effort to craft a hit,
creates songs that sound similar to what's being played on the
radio. They write about love gone wrong or teen frustration or
dealing with lustful urges ... all themes that have proven
themselves popular with the masses.

There's nothing wrong with this approach. There will always be a
need for predictable pop songs. However, since thousands of
songwriters are striving for the same type of hit, your struggl
to stand out and be noticed will be all uphill.

To stand out -- especially as an independent artist -- you have to
resist those well-traveled paths and find a distinct road that's
all your own. Sure, you won't appeal to as wide a range of people,
but the fans who do gravitate toward you will be cult-like in
their admiration.

Singer/songwriter Brad Belt is a good example of an artist who is
using focus to his advantage. "A few years ago I was in Nashville
at a music conference. In one of the sessions, a songwriter on the
panel mentioned how important it is to write about topics you know
a lot about. It got me thinking."

Belt continues, "Since I love golf and play as often as my wife
lets me, I figured maybe I should write a golf song or two. I
started taking the humorous situations that have happened to me
and others while playing and pieced together some golf songs."

After a couple of years of doing this without any particular game
plan, Belt realized that he had assembled enough golf songs to do
a CD. He did some research on the Internet and found that very
little had been done in the genre of golf music. He recorded and
mixed the songs in his home studio. Before long, Belt's new
release, called Golf Is a Cussin' Game, was born. It features 10
original songs that portray the humorous side of golf and those
who play it.

"I had my CD release party at the local country club, where I
performed some of the golf songs and told a few jokes," Belt reports.
"About 80 people showed up and I sold about 800 dollars worth of
CDs and cassettes. I sell them locally at coffee house shows, at golf
events and on the Internet at my web site (URL?), Amazon.com,
cdbaby.com and cdstreet.com. I'm looking for more golf events to do
shows at. If I can establish a reputation, I think I can sell a lot
of these CDs. I think niche marketing is a great idea."

Why does this offbeat angle work? Wouldn't Belt have better luck
releasing a CD filled with songs that everybody can relate to? Isn't he
limiting his reach by having such a narrow range of fans -- golfers?

Not at all.

There are a million other artists clamoring for the attention of
people who enjoy radio-friendly pop songs. But there are very few,
if any, artists who cater to golfers exclusively. In essence,
there's no competition. And it doesn't hurt that golfers can be
easily reached through country clubs and golf course events, that
golfers are often passionate about their sport, and that they tend
to have disposable income to spend on recreational purchases.

Marc Gunn, of the Brobdingnagian Bards, has a similar story. His
ensemble performs Celtic music -- traditional Irish and Scottish
folk songs. Recently, the Bards found that they were being invited
to play at a growing number of Renaissance festivals. These events
celebrate the culture of 16th century Europe (think Robin Hood era).

"At long last, we are focusing our music even more by putting out
our fourth album, called A Faire to Remember, which features our
favorite Renaissance faire songs," says Gunn. "It took a while for
us to develop this focus, though. When we started, we just recorded
music that our fans loved. But more and more faires are hiring us,
so we decided to focus our music by having a CD specifically
catering to faires."

Armed with a CD filled entirely with Renaissance faire music, the
Brobdingnagian Bards will surely get hired at many (and perhaps
most) of these events. By performing smack dab in the middle of
hundreds of Renaissance-era fans, the group stands to sell a lot
of CDs to this niche market.

Having a musical focus means having musical impact. So ... what's your focus?

Bob Baker is the author of "Guerrilla Music Marketing
Handbook," "Unleash the Artist Within" and "Branding
Yourself Online." He also publishes TheBuzzFactor.com, a
website and ezine that have been delivering marketing
tips and inspirational messages to music people of all kinds
since 1995. Get your FREE subscription to Bob's ezine by
visiting http://TheBuzzFactor.com today.

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510-531-2303
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Marketing Your Reggae Biz Tidbit
Email Etiquette - Save time with email templates for your business

By Kristine Cummins

Taking these measures save precious minutes of your business time.

Templates
Create template responses for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
Remember to personalize by beginning the message by greeting the
customer. There is a program that works conjointly with Outlook
that assists with managing template email messages called
ReplyMate for a fee.

Contact Form
Create a form on your contact page of your website. Include a dropdown
menu that routes your customer's question to the proper department.

Help or FAQ List
Right before your contact information or contact form, install a link
to a Frequently Asked Questions or Help file to save time. However,
it's very annoying for the user of your website to not be able to find
the answer to their question quickly. If you offer a lot of answers to
questions, install a "search" function. Be clear and concise with your
answers. If someone skipped the FAQ list and contacted you, ask
yourself if your answer was included in the list, or could have been
answered better.

See next week's Reggae Festival E-Guide
#10 of 10 Email Etiquette Reminders.

--Kristine is the Webmaster of www.ReggaeFestivalGuide.com.
She specializes in custom, affordable, fast downloading Websites
for small businesses. Call for quote 415-213-1914.
www.KristineCummins.com

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About Reggae Festival E-Guide & Contact Us

The Reggae Festival E-Guide is a weekly ezine through the
summer festival season, and monthly during the winter. It is
created by RBA Publishing LLC which publishes 2 popular
print magazines annually: Reggae Festival Guide and Blues
Festival Guide. The publisher, Kaati, is a member
of the Reggae Ambassadors Worldwide (#111).
Advertise in this E-Guide: www.ReggaeFestivalGuide.com/eguide.html

RBA Publishing, LLC
P.O. Box 50635
Reno, NV 89513
Website: www.ReggaeFestivalGuide.com
Email: NewsReggaeFestivalGuide.com
1-775-337-8344

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