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to promote, advertise, and publicize the series of thirteen major musical and cultural events which would make up the Homecoming Festival.

.Due to Mason 's absence and the seeming inability of the Commission to function vis a vis the Festival without him, artists were not even contacted until sometime in the spring- probably April- with non-specific offers to participate in Homecoming. The Commission apparently restricted its contact with the artists to a form letter mailed blindly out of Detroit, accepting any positive responses as definite commitments for the artists to appear at the Homecoming event. Contracts were not issued nor firm commitments secured until days before the Festival itself, making it impossible to effectively promote the shows- even with less than a month to go.

Mr. Mason and the Commission did not announce the event to the public until June 7th, only five weeks before the start of Homecoming '76. Even at that late date the Commission had not bothered to secure firm commitments from the principal attractions on its roster- the Spinners, the Four Tops, and the Temptations (Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, and the Motown stable had been mentioned as "sure things" in the fall, but all had disappeared by the June 7 date)- yet they went ahead and announced their participation anyway. Only days later the morning Free Press, already unsympathetic to the prospect of a major black music festival linked to the city's official bicentennial celebration, bannered across its front page the news that all three major pop groups not only would not appear at Homecoming "due to other commitments," but that none of them had been firmly contracted - or even firmly contacted- in the first place.

. Because the Commission, having neither budgeted nor raised any significant amount of money for advertising and promotion, had come to depend on the daily papers and the electronic media for major support in publicizing the Homecoming Festival, the media's lukewarm response in general- and its pointed exposes in particular- effectively precluded any possibility of success for the event. Furthermore, anyone with promotional experience, however slight, could have told them that it's not free publicity- or even expensive publicity- which sells out concerts, but concentrated, protracted advertising and promotion in all local media: full page newspaper ads, two or three months of daily radio spots, billboards, mass transit advertising, posters, flyers, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and the whole panoply of modern promotional devices. Of course all of this isn't necessary for a single pop concert, but for a nine-day, multi-venue, artistically-advanced series of jazz, blues, gospel, and other black-music concerts to have the slightest chance of success, one would have to pull out all the stops, budgeting as much money for promotion and advertising as humanly possible.

. With no advertising budget, the Commission's only chance would've been to pack the Festival with as many well-established pop-music stars as possible, hoping that the star value would trigger the media response necessary to sell the all-important tickets. Yet Mason not only "lost" the stars he thought he had secured, but he failed to attract enough performers with mass "name-value" to guarantee the success of even one of the many Homecoming concerts. This is no reflection on the musicians at all- the quality of their music, in America, has absolutely nothing to do with their commercial status- but it does serve as an indictment of Mr. Mason and the Commission, who were and are finally responsible for the financial success or failure of the event.

. With all these problems already glaringly evident by the time June 7th rolled around, Mason and the Commission went mindlessly ahead with almost all of their original plans, never seeming to notice that they had a sure-fire disaster staring them in the face despite every possible effort they could make. To top it off, Mason kept adding performers and shows to the June 7th schedule, rarely enhancing the commercial viability of an event but always adding to the costs and confusion. Several fairly manageable concerts- Keyboard Harmony, Detroit Reunion, the opening Stars Salute Detroit show- were swelled completely out of proportion by Mason's last-minute additions, guaranteeing that the concerts would certainly go into overtime and (at best) tax the endurance of their potential audiences. Mr. Mason's motives in this regard were unquestionably noble, but his actions worked to achieve just the opposite effect. If he had lowered the expectations of the event, cutting concerts, performers, and every possible cost before the initial announcement and then spending every available penny on a well-designed, inescapably visible advertising campaign during the month before July 16th, the Commission could probably have made t through the week of the Festival without shutting it down in the.middle.

. Finally there is the matter of the Commission's devil-may-care attitude going into the event, and its insistence that the publicity potential of this essentially esoteric black-music festival would be strong enough to carry a total of thirteen major concert events to the break-even point. The Commission frankly appeared to be so caught up in its own hype that its principals never considered the substantial problems involved in selling such an ambitious program to the ticket-buying public. Consequently its advertising campaign, already hopelessly crippled by a massive lack of funds, suffered even more from a smug, self-congratulatory tone and a series of nonspecific, almost incomprehensible mass advertising devices -from the idiotic slogan "Can You Feel the Spirit" to the useless bus cards and the well-hidden newspaper ads which failed to bill the performers at the many concerts until the last few days before Homecoming started. Only a hardcore music fanatic with inside knowledge of the Homecoming line-up could have been moved to buy tickets in advance; no one else had any reason to purchase tickets nor was given any motivation other than the vaguest exhortations to "feel the spirit," and the advance sales are the clearest possible proof of the failure of this approach.

After all is said and done, however, the Bicentennial Commission- and the City of Detroit behind it-is left holding the big bag of bills and headaches, political as well as financial. Cutting off the Festival in the middle might have saved further financial losses, but the political effects of the cancellation have yet to be fully calculated. There is no question that the performers- musicians, dancers, arrangers, sound and light operators- are outrageously disturbed over the Commission's panic-stricken action, but even worse will be the reactions of the white-owned media and the many additional critics of Joyce Garrett's stewardship of the Bicentennial Commission.

Unjustly and ignorantly maligned all year for her courage and exquisite taste in planning and sponsoring the artistically innovative Homecoming Festival, Ms. Garrett- who is also Mayor Young's "loving friend" and intimate companion-now has to suffer the smug attacks of the racist European-culture chauvinists in the mass media as well as the righteous anger and hostility of the local artistic community, whose outrage is compounded by the certain knowledge that, had their advice and experience been heeded months ago, when il would have done some good, Ms. Garrett would not be in the uncomfortable spot she now inhabits.

Yet and still, as the saying goes, Ms. Garrett, Mr. Mason, and their associates

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on the Bicentennial Commission staff have only themselves to blame- finally- for the failure of the Homecoming event. Their inability to comprehend the reasons for that they've been blaming it on the lack of support they received from the mass media- in no way mitigates the effect of their actions; and while they may be able to tough it through the adverse reaction in the press, they will not be able to escape the consequences of their betrayal of the local artistic community.

What's most important, in our humble opinion, is that the failure of the Bicentennial Commission's Homecoming '76 must not be taken to mean that any attempt at producing and promoting a comparable music festival based in downtown Detroit is doomed to a similar failure. In fact, a yearly Detroit Heritage Festival, incorporating both Detroit-originated talent and artists with no such homely connection to the city, could be not only a smashing artistic and financial success- given the proper approach- but a tremendous boon for the downtown scene and the city as a whole. The Newport-in-New-York Festival, after three or four years of experimentation and financial loss, is now on firm footing and has almost single-handedly revitalized the New York jazz scene as a whole, drawing mass attention to the artform itself and helping generate work year-round for participating musicians and everyone else on the scene.

A yearly Detroit Heritage Festival, incorporating for artistic and economic reasons the free Afro-American and Detroit Blues Festivals, could bring downtown Detroit to life like nothing else. Under the aegis of responsible promoters, directed by representatives of the Detroit artistic community, and with careful attention to both programming and promotional requirements, an annual Detroit Heritage Festival could present the best in music (both local and "national"), bring in some needed revenue for the city (instead of costing the citizens money), provide work (and much-needed exposure) for many locally based artists and other world-class musical talents, revitalize nightlife in downtown Detroit and the city in general, and raise the cultural hopes and aspirations of concerned Detroiters to a new high.

In fact, one is hard-pressed to think of a more positive, more socially useful, and potentially more successful event for this depression-ridden city than a downtown Detroit Heritage Festival. Let's do it again in 77- the right way! And while we're at it, let's give Ms. Garrett and Company a big fat "A" for aspiration and artistic truth- believe me, it's all the good marks they're going to be getting for quite some time.

(photo caption)

Herbie Williams and Candy Johnson at the "Jazz Reunion" concert