Arooj Aftab

or royalties on his next book

Not sure about other cities, but she played a pretty small venue here in the spring (~200), so am curious if others have seen "massive" turnouts. Tickets were only $31 all-in with venue fees and taxes. I have to imagine her audience is older, which means she can probably stand to raise prices and not lose as many, but I do think her demos have been slower to return to nightlife post-covid.

yeah, i think what she is saying there is "hey i'm doing pretty well and still drowning, help our industry is dying"

obviously i don't think bands playing shows is ever going to disappear, but the one-two punch of predatory streaming and COVID may take out a lot of them ... probably already has and we just don't know it yet.

adding this after seeing Indexed's post: yes, her interpretation of "massive" and proving oneself in markets may be different than others'.

Well, feeling guilty, I just bought VP on vinyl. Didn't realize it had finally been released.

bummer for sure

usually would not advocate for patronage but the margin on a vinyl is not great afaik, so I imagine sending ~2 dollars directly could possibly benefit as much as buying a 30 dollar vinyl

touring should not have a negative margin

I wanted to buy Vulture Prince at her gig - I like buying directly from the artist where possible - but they were charging 40 euros. I want to be a good fan and support her but I couldn't justify spending that much on an album.

Not that that detracts from what she's saying.

I find it hard to believe that many artists are touring at a loss right now, let alone a loss of “tens of thousands” of dollars

yeah, for a three piece... I dunno, should be possible to pay hotels and travel expenses

but then again, it's the music biz

remember when I first read abt members of TLC filing for bankruptcy at the height of their immense commercial sucess (but I digress)

I think they played a lot of festivals, which I could see not paying super well (?). Also, on her list, "visas" stood out to me. I don't know if she has US citizenship or not, but especially if she doesn't, I imagine that is pretty expensive

I see she has a European tour coming up. Possible that they have just had to pre-book (and pay for) lots of plane tickets, visas, hotels, etc. in advance of getting paid?

I thought festivals (and colleges) were the big money makers on tour? That's what I have always heard.

I read that more as a riposte to the idea that "touring is how you make money in the music biz" rather than a specific critique of venue prices, even if that seems like the only immediately available solution

― rob, Wednesday, September 7, 2022 2:46 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Her wording in the two tweets shared above kind of conveys that feeling popular tweets often do where people are meant to be whipped up to "take a stand" against some oppressive societal system or power ("This should not be normalized" & "we are expected to take the hit") so while I agree with you about their likely intention I was a little unsure myself, hence my own initial response. Also I do wonder how universal her experience is, not to push back against it or anything but there are a lot of baseline variables depending on who you are, where you're going and what you need to bring with you.

I find it hard to believe that many artists are touring at a loss right now, let alone a loss of “tens of thousands” of dollars

― zacata, Thursday, September 8, 2022 7:34 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

why is it hard to believe that artists are touring at a loss?

festival guarantees are much much smaller than a regular gig for all the small font artists. if an artist wants to book hotels instead of sleeping in cans or buses, a 20+ day tour can run up thousands of dollars, even if all three band members share a room.

the venue also takes home 50% of the door and 100% of the bar for the vast majority of artists who aren’t at the superstar level. and in rooms like the ones aftab is playing, you basically have to sell out to see any money at all

50% of the door is a generous estimate that not every artist gets, they usually just get a flat guarantee (given the budget that a lot of small venues work with, that number is prob much smaller than you think it is) and the promoters get the ticket proceeds

Lots of venues take a percentage of merch sales too

which is bullshit

Do they really? Not just when they provide a merch person?

No, the venue usually gets the money from the merch person. They count everything in during load in and recount it after the show. It's a really shitty practice.

I have never understood why bands don't just load more merch in during the opening band. I guess you'd have to be pretty attentive to keep track of it all (ie "why is there more merch here now than when you started?")

I actually don't know how widespread it is, but Stereolab recently posted that there were only 2 venues on their upcoming tour which don't take a cut.

xxp

That is such a bullshit practice that needs to be shamed out of existence, ASAP. I've seen a couple of impassioned arguments FOR the practice from small venue owners that bemoan how much things cost for them, but none of it was enough to convince me.

My most detailed peek into touring band finances was a band some friends were in that used to tour Europe playing mostly small theaters. 8 piece band in a bus plus a sound person, driver, and merch person. Pre-pandemic they would come home with some money, let's say $5 - 15k per person depending on the length of the tour. Not great money at all if you're trying to live on it, and can't take a a full-time job so you can tour a few months out of the year. But definitely not losing tens of thousands of dollars.

I'm sure things are worse now in terms of missed shows due to travel snafus and COVID, lower turn-out and sales, etc. But I'd love to know how much worse, ie does that explain everything or are there additional factors in Aftab's situation.

I see she's booked to come back to the Washington DC area in April 2023 on a bill with Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily all together in a collaborative project called Love in Exile at the fancy suburban Strathmore Music Center in Maryland that I think holds 2,200 people. $23 to $68. Not sure they will fill the place, but maybe she gets a sizable guarantee?

recent conversation i had with two booking agents suggested that Europe for jazz/"world" is good guaranteed money, US is not.

Lots of venues take a percentage of merch sales too

this is insane? does that go for both US/EU?

xxpost To have an idea of what you might be for with Love In Exile, scroll up to where I posted the link to their streaming concert: click on that, then click on the Vimeo you'll see, as I just now did: seems fine, although I didn't try to play the whole thing. Mainly because, as I said in my comments then (May, 2021), I sometimes got frustrated by the knottier, lengthier piano traffic patterns, despite the excellent vocals and bass---piano was effective at times as well, but judging by posts about recent shows, seems like she still gives her colleagues a lot of space---and Vijay is my least favorite of the people she's performed with (although he's always been an effective anchor-to-axis-and-back for Burnt Sugar). But she's mentioned a Love In Exile album that was finished a while back, and I would like to hear it---for one thing, maybe studio budgeting etc. would rein him in.

Time to spill the beans … https://t.co/a1OrLh39Gg

— arooj aftab (@arooj_aftab) November 18, 2022

Definitely looking forward to that at Big Ears.

looking forward to hearing that

Been checking out Love in Exile video online from the last few years via NYC shows and a DC one at the Phillips Collection art museum. Improvised and a bit more melancholy. Definitely rewarding

Oh, some of the Love in Exile stuff is mentioned upthread. They first did it in 2018 and have done it on and off over the years.

Has the Love in Exile album been delayed? It's March in like 10 days but no preorder, no tracklisting, no info since that tweet back in November.

https://f-cat.de/en/artist/love-in-exile

This says spring 2023. Aftab's manager told me during a zoom interview I did with her a few weeks ago, that the first single from it would be out February 23 and that the album would be out March 23

^ Ooh, thanks, I'm glad it's not pushed back! She has just confirmed the single on Twitter BTW:

FIRST SINGLE of the new project is out tomorrowwwww TOMORROWWW

— arooj aftab (@arooj_aftab) February 22, 2023

tomorrow... but that's... today!!

yes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z0w7U6yw0c
Arooj Aftab ft. Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily • To Remain/To Return

(there's also a 3'19 edit)

has anyone listened to this all?
I think it’s a beautiful piece, if perhaps less ‘dramatic’ than the Vulture Prince material

Yes, I really enjoyed it, but will wait for the full album before listening again.

ha, I was going to post the exact same thing

Working w/ Vijay Iyer & S. Azmaily rather than Vulture Prince musicians I think is going to sound a bit different (although some of Aftab vocal melodies may seem consistent). Upthread and on Youtube are some live Love in Exile shows from NY & DC that the album will likely resemble.

Gonna be including the album in my Stereogum column for March even though it's pretty far from "jazz." Really beautiful, though.

Looks like the album is not going to include the magnificent piece they did for the Resonant Bodies comp (is that how they got they her?)

https://newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/resonant-bodies?t=6 if you missed it

* is that how they got together?

Iyer I read often invites people to perform with him and he invited Aftab to play onstage with him. Then he invited Aftab and Ismaily to do so, and after they all played together once , Ismaily was so so wowed he asked the other two to keep playing together as a trio

album is out (have yet to listen)

keep waiting for the album to begin, riyl sleepy ECM

Yeah it's more an ECM album with Arooj than an Arooj Aftab album. I also found the beginning to be too quiet, but now I'm enjoying the dialogue between piano and double bass and the tranquil warmth (Shadow Forces - Sajni), the slightly darker Eyes of the Endless. I think there's enough tension and beauty to hook me.

I have precisely zero problems with sleepy ECM plus Arooj.