By Sarah Fenwick, co-founder Sarah’s Jazz Club, Editor CyprusNewsReport.com.
Everyone told me that starting a jazz club in Nicosia would be difficult, nearly impossible because of the Kafkaesque licensing system designed to trap you into fines and legal dead ends. Many venues operate without licenses because of the complexities and expense. It’s simpler to just pay the fines and put it down to the cost of doing business, they think.
I was scared, to be honest. The considerable financial and legal risks involved in starting a place that would host live jazz and blues loomed large in my mind. There were three reasons we decided not to play it safe. The first was my passion and mission to promote the music. The second was the support of my family, and of Mayor Yiorgadjis and the Municipal Council. The third was my intuition that Nicosia could be a great musical capital of the EU based on the high level of talent we have here.
The whole process of licensing didn’t disappoint my low expectations. Even Kafka would have been impressed by the sheer level of stonewalling we encountered. One civil servant pointed me in the direction of the other until I was dizzy from going around in circles. The process gained traction when the health inspector visited the premises of Sarah’s Jazz Club and approved us after considerable lobbying and letter writing. Logically, that should have led us to the second license; the alcohol license, which is conditional on the health license. That didn’t happen though, even though the CTO expressed no objection to us receiving the relevant license, our application was rejected in another stonewalling exercise. By that time I was just determined to get it sorted out. Putting aside my disappointment and inclination to give up, I started another letter writing campaign, along with personal visits to persuade the civil servants of the value of good quality acoustic music.
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