Promote or Demote Yourself!

Guitarist and performer Greg Chako provides some advice to help with your promotion.

I am a member of multiple Facebook Groups with jazz or guitar as the primary focus. Recently, an administrator of one of the groups was admonishing somebody (not me, though it could well have been) NOT to promote himself in any way whatsoever on that particular forum. The admin guy said; “Promotion is for your fans, not your fellow musicians.” He even went so far as to insult the poor guy by saying, “… maybe if you promoted more to your fans, you wouldn’t play to empty rooms.”

Seems to me that this administrator would have no way of knowing how many folks showed up to this member’s shows, but in any event, I took issue with his admonishment. I looked at the group’s core purpose and it stated that it was to “spread the music to more people.” That prompted me to chime in on the thread by asking the admin guy an honest question: 

“How are we supposed to spread the music without promoting ourselves at all?”

He failed to even attempt to answer my question, and instead, he replied that he’d be happy to remove me from the group if I was unwilling to comply to the rules. Wow! Why did he come off like that? Hasn’t he ever heard of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”? (ha!)

Here’s the thing that he and others like him obviously don’t understand: 

Our fellow musicians are our biggest fans! 

I suppose that that rule is their attempt to avoid spam. But what is it we musicians talk about if not what we’re currently working on? Or where we’ve been playing? Or if we’re releasing a new album? That’s not spam! That’s simply relevant and meaningful news that should be welcome within our local musicians community. For me, Facebook is a good forum for this kind of sharing. While each FB Group can administer their page however they want, and there are certainly no shortage of groups to join and participate in, this recent thread I mentioned prompted me to write about self-promotion and the promotion of a musicians community in general.

I now live and was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. I lived abroad for close to 20 years for the bulk of my professional career as a player, but I can nonetheless still recall being active on the local Cincy jazz scene back in the 1980s. I can honestly say that the sense of ‘community’ amongst the local musicians that I felt then, and have always felt when living abroad, seems to be sadly lacking today. The anti-promotion rule that this FB group has does nothing to remedy the situation. Rather, those kinds of attitudes make things even harder for us to stay relevant and exposed! 

We musicians (irrespective of genre or specialty) need to support each other. Doing music consistently is hard, and getting paid for it is even more elusive! Much of our practice is solitary, there are far fewer jazz venues to ‘hang out’ in than ever before, and with the onslaught of COVID, the Digital Revolution, and changing social norms, even person-to-person interaction is far less frequent than it was ever before in my lifetime. 

Something to consider is, how can we expect “fans” to support us if we don’t even support each other! We should want to go to each other’s shows, mingle with as many of our colleagues as we can, and have lively and open discussions about our music and the industry in general. I believe it’s easier to sustain our individual efforts with a positive mindset if we’re in a community of like-minded people. 

Nobody is an island, and everybody has an ego. While spiritually speaking, we may all hope to keep our egos in check, realistically, we rely on our egos to do what we do as musicians, and especially so as improvisers. It’s our egos that represent our musical individuality as players. I have yet to meet a serious player who is totally egoless! Promoting our music and controlling our egos, are NOT two mutually exclusive things! Both can and should be done simultaneously.

I realize that there are some musicians who don’t want to “self-promote,” as if it somehow denigrates the music. Well, I am writing this article for all those musicians out there (like me!) who cannot afford the kind of promotional support team that the world’s most successful musicians have, such as a: Manager; Agent; Publicist; Publisher; Lawyer; Distributor; and Radio promotion company. There are very few among us who can afford to hire a team like that, right? I’m fairly sure Taylor Swift has ALL that and MORE! But you? Me? So . . . I’ll ask these rhetorical questions:

If WE don’t promote our music, and we can’t afford to hire a team that will, then WHO WILL?  HOW do we get fans if nobody has heard of us or our music? 

The answers are: 

1. Nobody  

2. We won’t  

Therefore, we need to be as proactive as we can be, whether we’re shy or not, in promoting our shows and our music any and every chance we get. That begins with engaging our fellow players (and students too for that matter, if you have any). You’ve heard the expression: “The squeaky wheel gets the oil!” Well, as an older jazz player (66 years of age), who has quite literally traveled the world playing and promoting jazz, I recall well some of the advice I got when I was younger from older, more experienced ‘cats.’ I believe it was the famous trombonist “Slide” Hampton who was among the very first to tell me I needed to assemble a mailing list to advertise all my performances and help develop a fan base. There were a host of other well-known cats like him who gave me advice about “putting yourself out there.” But their advice was never for me to make a self-imposed distinction between a fan and a musician – rather, I was encouraged to tell all, all the time!

Historically speaking, the jazz world is chock-a-block full of great mentors spurring on their younger and less experienced wanna-be’s like I was. Admittedly, it may be harder today to rub shoulders with the Slide Hamptons of the world, especially if you don’t live near NYC, but for sure, you‘re less likely to find any such advice if you’re not putting yourself on the scene, speaking up, asking questions, and in short . . . promoting yourself with vigor. Otherwise, you may inadvertently demote yourself! 

Don’t brag, but let folks who are interested know what you’re doing. Don’t spam, but tell folks where and when you’re playing. Don’t avoid social media like FB, but use it to your advantage. Whether you’re doing a little or a lot, SHARE with your fellow musos . . . because keeping things to yourself (secrets) doesn’t help you or anybody else! 

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