The 100 word assignment

I wrote yesterday that my emails to DownBeat and the JazzTimes had gone unanswered. I sent those emails to the generic editor @ address, and thought that a response would be more than a long shot. Imagine my surprise when I returned home last night to find an email from an associate editor at DownBeat asking me for a "nice photo and paragraph caption" about the El Bolsón Jazz Festival. The paragraph, later clarified as 100 words, isn't quite the assignment of a lifetime, but I'll be thrilled to get on the board as a freelance writer for a US publication.

This also will be a really tough assignment. There's no guarantee, of course, that DownBeat will print the photo/paragraph, and two obstacles stand in the way. First, I don't have a camera down here. I imagine I'll be able to borrow one, but people are, understandably, very protective of their photo-taking babies. The more interesting challenge is how to summarize the festival in an interesting way in only 100 words. No doubt, those will be 100 words over which I'll agonize and rewrite several times. That said, I believe brevity is a virtue and I'll be happy to condense a weekend of music into a piece that will be less than half the length of this blog entry.

Hopefully, the first of five easy pieces before the symphony.