What do a golden smiling cat, kaleidoscope silk trousers and a colourful helter skelter have in common? Why am I so excited by the smiling cat, so much so that I took a video of it as it waved at me from a Chinese shop on my local high road?
Well, I’m an independent musician living in London, a town brimming with talent. I live in a town of 12 million souls, at least 100,000 of which are performing musicians. Look on the internet and you will see any number of musicians publicising their gigs to you. The competition is incredibly stiff so I need to find new ways to get your attention and encourage you to buy a ticket to my next gig. The majority of venues in London work on a door split with the artist. Often it is 70/30 to the performer or band and band leaders pay their musicians out of ticket sales. Getting bums on sets is therefore critical. I can still feel your confusion as you read on. How are any of these unrelated objects, particularly that Chinese Cheshire Cat grinning wooden animal getting bums on seats at your gigs?
The answer for me lies in creating humorous and inventive links between disparate objects and images to create my own brand of promo, the kind of advertising that makes people chuckle and simultaneously notice you. I am the self-styled digital Jester in your lives, performing a humorous prelude to my show that makes you grin like the Golden Chinese Cat and hopefully gets you to press the “purchase” button. Let me entertain youuuuuuuuuuuu.
I share my promos on social media – where I hope they will make people smile – and perhaps even buy a ticket to my next gig or check out my album online.
Let’s face it, any independent artist has to promote their work. So why not have a lot of fun with it and use the space around you as a giant promotional toyshop full of colour, creative wonder and laughter. We are living in an age of what they call the democratisation of technology. We have this astounding pocket tool on our person which allows us to sound out our creative wares to the universe. And all we need is our own imaginations. How delightful is that. but if I keep my approach kaleidoscopic (the name of my quartet incidentally, is the Kaleidoscope Quartet) you will continue to notice me. You may even start following me, to see what I get up to next. If it were up to me, I’d get on a kaleidoscopic broomstick a la Wizard of Oz and spray my next gig date into the skies!
My bag of tricks to promote myself is ever increasing, A video to promote my gig whereby I play both the L.A interviewer and my London musician self, using just a pair of sunglasses to differentiate between the two, singing videos where I croon out the gig details to you, a minuscule one minute exercise class to my music with a gig invite deftly thrown in whilst lifting weights, my trousers talking to you about their excitement at my upcoming gig, an interplanetary invite from a French broadcast journalist played by moi. I speak three and a half languages you see; French, Spanish, Portuguese and a working knowledge of Italian and I have spontaneously added them to my palette.
I’m looking back on my younger selves now and wondering whether this desire to promote myself entertainingly wasn’t always part of my personality. I recall performing plays as an eight-year-old with my brother at our parents’ New Year’s Eve parties. Apparently I couldn’t pronounce the “shhh” in my surname Barschak. That did not stop me from going up to people I didn’t know at their parties and promoting myself as Tamara Barsac, something that caused uproarious laughter. Later, in my early teens, I would stand on the balcony of the second floor of my parents’ house declaiming loudly to passers-by with “friends, Romans, west Hampsteadites, lend me your ears”. Some looked up and smiled, others frowned and others simply ignored me. The latter didn’t stop me from continuing with Caesar’s soliloquy changing a word here, a phrase there to suit my comical agenda.
So, if you happen to live in my village of north west London, you may find me prancing along in my Jesters outfit, playing a melodica dressed as the Pied Piper of Tamlin as I draw you in and get you to sing and dance behind me till we reach the venue of my next gig. At the very least my promotional efforts will make you smile. You won’t regret becoming my friend or my fan.
