10/18/2023
Good morning, coming to bear sad news. The 1st Annual Austin Zydeco Festival has been AGAIN postponed! The City of Austin permitting department obviously does not communicate thoroughly with the parks and recreation department and any other departments and make the big decisions and has clearly shown that they are not interested in this festival. Our original date of October 8th had to be either changed or we had to cancel the date because the Special Events office said that our festival would interfere with the shuttle operations of the ACL Festival which was held at Zilker Park and our festival was to be held at Republic Square. So we lost some vendors, sponsors and ticket sales because of that. We regrouped and changed the date. Now the fire marshal didn't know what a 360 photobooth was, they needed to know what type of genre of music it is, what will we do about this or that and we can park here, but can't park there. It can be a ticketed event if we do this or it can't be if we do not do that. Then to add injury to insult, charged $10,000.00 to use Republic Square from 3pm to 9pm.......6 hours for $10k! It is obvious to me now as the producer of this festival that we were doomed from the beginning! When I initially sought permission to host the festival I put it out upfront that this was going to be the first ever festival which obviously meant, we had low funds! I don't know for certain, but I am willing to bet that some of the food festivals and market festivals that I have participated in as a vendor did not have to pay such an enormous amount just to use a park that is a city block long on all sides! The city of Austin in no way cared about the money that would be lost and as a result of the favoritism shown to another entity, the 1st Annual Austin Zydeco Festival wasn't going to recover and obviously not intended to happen from the beginning after the first rejection. The artists; Step Rideau & the Zydeco Outlaws, Marcus Ardoin and Da Zydeco Legendz, Ruben Moreno and Zydeco Re-Evolution, Brandon Ledet and Creole Touch and Donna Angelle & The Zydeco Posse had to reschedule and rearrange their other engagements to still try to perform with us from the original date. Our media sponsor MrsRaven Carmouche who worked with me to push the promotions for the festival had to rearrange her schedule. Our dj DJ LAM ENT and photographer Captured Moments by Sherlitha rearranging to still try to accommodate. Our vendors some stayed on after the first date change, but we lost some and had to refund their money and now we are in the same boat again. Had the Special Events office communicated properly with the parks and recreation department we would have known in the very absolute beginning not to have chosen the month of October because they WILL NOT grant permits to anything over the ACL Festival and most likely I would have gone in a different direction and we would not be here now! Zydeco music is not a race, it's not a color, it's not a political party, it's not a nuisance to fear, it is a culture, a heritage that celebrates the people of Louisiana that a lot of families in Austin, Houston, Dallas, etc have family roots and ties. It brings people together through dancing, eating, fellowship, laughter and fun. I was told that Austin wanted diversity and to culturally change and become host to more diversified events and unfortunately it is not the truth. If you truly want change you do all that you can to make that change happen not dissect it and pick it apart looking for all the bad instead of recognizing the good and the potential. More importantly when you clearly want change you do everything you can to make that change happen and unfortunately in our case it was just mere words, the intention for our festival to be successful was never truly the mindset and it has shown. The motto that is quoted proudly in Austin to "Keep Austin Weird", is something to be ashamed of and definitely not proud of because it basically means that no change is desired. Nothing new or different from the norm is wanted and the separation and so very obvious division and lack of diversity will always be if no one never speaks on it. We will regroup, we will garner new and more sponsors, vendors and add a few more Zydeco recording artists and we are going to have the best Zydeco Festival ever given! Texas Snow, Flower Girls Farm, Davlin Edwards, Baby J’s Jell-O-shots, Brittnay Eckwood, Bee Delightful, Dolce Candy Austin, Dusty Girl Wood Carving , Rathrun Julep, Renewal by Andersen of Austin we will be reaching out to you all individually to discuss your refund or applying your fees to the new date. Sorry to all of those who had planned on attending, we are just as disappointed. Stay tuned as our new date and location will be posted soon.
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