Contest: Travel with music// The Music Trip as Long as Life// #club5050

I am a professional musician, I have been playing and singing music for all my life.

I decided that I should definitely write about how musicians work in Russia, where they perform, whom they play for. The new contest of Steem-Travelers community is just the right time to do it.

I've played in a lot of bands in my life. Once upon a time I started with flamenco music: two guitars, a bass, and a big drum called congo.

It was 20 years ago. At that time there were many casinos in Russia, where musicians played for many hours. We started at 8 pm and finished at 2 am. In those days, you could earn very well on music, for example, you could get a monthly salary of an average Russian person just for one night of work, because people asked you to play songs in addition to the repertoire. In Russia, if a person wants to hear some song and he asks for it, then he has to pay the musicians for it. For one song you could earn from 50 to 100 dollars.The people at that time were very generous, there were a lot of bandits in the casino who loved music and loved our band.

Then suddenly I got tired of playing the bass guitar and I decided to sing. I was good at it. I started traveling on music contracts to different countries, and now I am telling about these trips in the Steem-Travelers community in my other posts. I sang in bars, restaurants, hotels and clubs.

It was interesting and boring at the same time. It's interesting because I've seen a lot, I've visited a lot of places and cities,I talked and met many people from different countries. It's boring, because it took a long time to live in these countries. Sometimes six months, sometimes a year. When you live in one place for a long time, you start to miss your friends and home a lot. Such work is even perceived as a prison. You have no choice: you just sing the same songs in a foreign country.

One day I stopped traveling and switched back to work in Russia. The time period changed, everything was no longer the same as it had been before. Live music in restaurants and clubs gradually ceased to be in demand, more and more DJs appeared who worked in tandem with a saxophone or violin, but there was still a lot of work at corporate parties of large organizations, at banquets, at festive lunches and dinners. I continued to sing and worked with thematic programs: French program, Italian program, Spanish program...

Since I performed such exclusive programs and no one else did it in my city, I always had work: meetings of ambassadors, foreign delegations, receptions of officials. I also played bass guitar at small and large stages in several bands. For example, here:

Or here:

Or here:

and this:

and that:

and well many others:

As musicians, we traveled a lot all over the country, flew to the south and north of the country, and also performed at parties in different countries. Some organizations had their corporate parties in hotels of Turkey or the Emirates, they rented a whole plane for their employees and musicians and we flew somewhere for a few days.

In addition, I was engaged in the promotion of my own music, I took part in television filming, participated in charity events, gave solo concerts.

Now I play in two bands. One of them is a female cover band. We play pop music in an interesting jazz format.

Another band plays indie-pop and rock. This is a very interesting author's project.

I still play concerts, but now it happens less often. Covid has greatly influenced the music industry, many musicians are out of work, they survive as they can: some people work as taxi drivers, someone writes at Steemit.

I think that I have been incredibly lucky in life: I have found myself and I am still doing what I love, even if not as often as I wish. I have always tried to take advantage of the opportunities that the Destiny gives. And the Destiny has been kind to me. Well, you see, I wrote only about myself again, but I think I also told a little bit about music.

This song is from my concert. Alena Vladi (music, lyrics, vocal, bass)

Thank you dear @hive-111293 for this contest! The link to the contest is here:
https://steemit.com/hive-111293/@hive-111293/travel-contest-13th-edition-40-steem-or-concurso-de-viajes-13a-edicion-40-steem

I invite @nesmeliy and @stickmans to take part in this contest. I know that they like music.