Some info, and a suggestion.

Someone who either IS or SUPPORTS Valery Siver's music has been posting site commercials similarly-headed for several weeks.

I wrote to Mr. Siver (probably not the only one who did), asking that whoever is posting them stop. I also wrote to someone who turned out to be a really interesting and nice person, at a site that Siver had linked from his and whose site links to Valery's. I asked (as a Mudcat member) if the person had any way of letting Mr. Siver know (to simplify) that the posts had caused more bad feeling than support. I wrote at some length about the special kind of forum Mudcat is, and the way its members support one another in a thousand ways.

That correspondence has resulted in my knowing about a really nice new site for world music of all sorts-- a real celebration of cultural and musical diversity.

I don't like spammy promotional threads any more than the next person. But I would ask that we consider that this one may actually be from Mr. Siver himself, and that he has asked for the first time what we think about the music itself. We have Mudcatters of all sorts. Mr. Siver may end up being one, from Russia.

So... let's see how this thread develops. Let's not dismiss it (quite yet) as being just like all the others.

~Susan