44 days to go

A quick update: Cat, Jill (my mum) and I have been hard at work in myspace primarily. It is really an amazing experience finding so many inspiring and adventurous artists. All the positive and encouraging responses certainly keep us going as we jump the time consuming hurdles of myspace security checks and periods of painfully slow load times.
Jill has been exploring, Western Australia & French speaking Africa, I have been in South America and Cat has been traversing the Near and Far East. I think it is safe to say that my mum is more of a fan of folk music than hip hop, but we are both excited about some of the urban artists in the Ivory Coast - a thriving scene it seems. Colombia, Argentina and Uruguay have given us some fantastic musicians of all sorts - powerful songwriting and melody making.
Having written last time that artists from the Middle East were hard to find I tapped a rich seam in Egypt and Palestine - such strength and positivity.
We still don't have a Russian translation of the invitation text and it is very hard to make intelligible contact with Russians, Ukrainians, Siberians, Belorussians et al with out it. However we are making new headway in finding a translator and hopefully will be able to concentrate on the region before long.
This morning I have had the chance to stop and consolidate all the registered performers details and there are over 50 and at least 20 more in the myspace pipeline. A great international spread and it goes without saying I suppose but an amazing diversity of style.
Working with myspace mail does have it's issues - it is not searchable or indeed possible to order and it deletes after two weeks, so it is a jungle once the flow of correspondence is going - and it really is. We are trying to encourage those who want to take part to divert to the gmail account and/or register online. Apologies to anyone who is currently buried under a few days mail who we haven't got back to yet. We will!

60 days to go

So Gill's new site design is up (www.dialadiva.net), and the print is on its way with the new numbers. The invitations to perform are going out into the world and the responses, especially from those who took part last time, are very heartening.
Cat continues concentrating on myspace and is doing a fantastic job finding interesting performers all over the place. I have just joined her in myspace land.... so many amazing performers out there. Myspace has grown a lot since the last Dial-a-Diva and is so much more international than before, when it really was the domain of North America, Western Europe and Australia - great to be able to connect with African, Russian, Asian, South American performers... it is still not really a hotbed of middle eastern musicians who are harder to reach as yet.
My Mum (Jill) who was the backbone of the last Dial-a-Diva research operation, is back in action scoping for Oceanic, Samoan and Alaskan acts at the moment.
We now have information translated into 15 different languages that will be downloadable from the website soon.
It certainly is all hands on deck with the good ship Diva in preparation for the grand round the world voyage.