22 Jun
2011
22 Jun
'11
6:19 p.m.
The relative merits of pay for callers, musicians and sound people would be
a good topic for discussion.
I'm both a musician and a caller, too, and while calling is harder for me,
it's possibly because I've not been doing it for 60 years, which is about
how long I've been a musician. So you might say I put in the hard work years
ago on playing music and am putting in the hard work now to call. If I
became a sound person, I'd have to work pretty hard, too. But just about the
time that I got to be worth paying a lot of money for, it would probably be
easy.
But I am curious - in your groups, are callers paid more, or less, than
musicians (on average)? How about the sound guys? And on what do you base
the amounts?
I remember a discussion on approximately this topic a couple of years ago,
where someone had moved from a large dance community, where she was paid
rather handsomely, to a small community where everyone was a volunteer. If I
remember right, she enjoyed being a part of both communities, but noted that
the one difference was that the volunteers were more likely *not *to show up
if there was a difficulty, whereas the paid talent would show up even in a
snowstorm. You were paying, in other words, for professionalism.
Then there is a curious situation that has developed here. Our musicians,
years ago, were part of the dance community. They'd come to our dances, and
at our dance weekend, they'd dance, and jam on the lawn, and we'd all dine
together. Then we started rewarding them with higher pay because we liked
their contribution so much. The result over time was that they started
treating it as a gig rather than as a social event. Now they show up about
ten minutes before dance time, they play, and then they either go home or,
at our dance weekend, they find some out-of-the-way place to jam, away from
the dancers. I just looked at our list of bands, and there's only one
person - okay, two - listed in our local contra dance bands that regularly
dance with us any more. Is that normal in your communities?
M
E
On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Cynthia Phinney <online(a)starleft.org>wrote;wrote:
At our series (a small local dance in rural Maine), we
divide the door up
into one share each for band members, caller, and sound (sound gets one
share) for bands of five people or less. Once the bands get over five
people, the caller gets a larger share.
My experience of being both a caller AND a musician, is that calling is
significantly more work than playing. I also find that it is more work,
usually, to call for a large band than a small one. Communication is more
challenging, and there is usually more doodling and chatting in the
background from the band. Plus - for us - some of our larger bands are
students and so the music isn't perfectly honed for dancers, which means
that the caller is needed even more to help keep the dancers on the phrase
since it isn't so crisply defined by the musicians (our dance also has a
significant percentage of inexperienced dancers).
-cynthia
-----Original Message-----
From: callers-bounces(a)sharedweight.net
[mailto:callers-bounces@sharedweight.net] On Behalf Of Dan Pearl
Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2011 12:50 PM
To: callers(a)sharedweight.net
Subject: Re: [Callers] Caller Fees
Interesting!
I chair the Thursday Night Dance Committee of NEFFA, which runs a weekly
dance
at the Concord Scout House, in Massachusetts. I would characterize our pay
as
good. Here are the basics:
1. We expect equal shares for all performers (musicians/callers). In only
very
unusual circumstances will we pay different amounts.
2. Guarantee (per performer) is dependent on # of performers. 3 => $155; 4
=>
$145; 5 => $125; 6 => $104; 7 => $89.
3. Performers who travel a distance (say over 1 hour) to get to the dance
get
$15 extra.
4. Bonus *is* dependent on attendance. We assume that if people came out in
droves to dance, the performers probably had something to do with it, and
they
should be rewarded. For a well-attended night, it is not unusual for
performers
to make around $200 each. For an exceptionally well-attended night, they
might
make $300 each.
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Callers mailing list
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--
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance. ~ William Butler Yeats
22 Jun
22 Jun
7:09 p.m.
Martha Edwards wrote:
But I am curious - in your groups, are callers paid more, or less,
than musicians (on average)? How about the sound guys?
We (bida) pay all of them the same, though we don't include the sound
person in profit sharing.
And on what do you base the amounts?
What we can afford. As our dance has grown, we've raised our
guarantees some. If we found we were building up too much in our bank
account we would raise them more.
the dancers. I just looked at our list of bands, and there's only
one person - okay, two - listed in our local contra dance bands that
regularly dance with us any more. Is that normal in your
communities?
The model in my head is a turnover based one. There's relatively high
turnover for dancers. If I go to the scout house now, maybe 1/3 were
dancing when I used to go there regularly in 2006. So lots of people
come for a while, then stop. Some of the people who stay around are
just people who really like dancing. Many others, though, are ones
who have broadened into other community roles: calling, playing,
organizing, running sound.
Maybe some musicians lose interest in dancing, like other people who
lose interest in dancing, but instead of disappearing they remain
somewhat connected, playing for dances?
Jeff
8:11 p.m.
Good point!
Many years ago I read that mailing lists (remember them? Not e-mail
distribution lists, but actual mail mailing lists.) shrink about 15% a year.
I've noticed about the same effect in dance communities. So the group I
dance in has less than a half dozen of the dancers I danced with when I
started dancing about 15 years ago which is almost exactly 15% loss each
year!
In any case, it's a nicer thought than "The ingrates started treating us
like dirt as soon as we started paying them more."
M
E
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 2:09 PM, Jeff Kaufman <jeff(a)alum.swarthmore.edu>wrote;wrote:
Martha Edwards wrote:
--
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance. ~ William Butler Yeats
I just looked at our list of bands, and
there's only
one person - okay, two - listed in our local contra dance bands that
regularly dance with us any more. Is that normal in your
communities?
The model in my head is a turnover based one. There's relatively high
turnover for dancers. If I go to the scout house now, maybe 1/3 were
dancing when I used to go there regularly in 2006. So lots of people
come for a while, then stop. Some of the people who stay around are
just people who really like dancing. Many others, though, are ones
who have broadened into other community roles: calling, playing,
organizing, running sound.
Maybe some musicians lose interest in dancing, like other people who
lose interest in dancing, but instead of disappearing they remain
somewhat connected, playing for dances?
Jeff
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)sharedweight.net
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
9:01 p.m.
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 3:11 PM, Martha Edwards
<meedwards(a)westendweb.com> wrote:
In any case, it's a nicer thought than "The
ingrates started treating us
like dirt as soon as we started paying them more."
Since no one's getting rich on the fees we pay musicians, I doubt that
there are many musicians who show up just for the money. [If I play
for a couple more dances, I might be able to afford a new set of
strings for my bass (grin)]
I think that the "ingrates" (I read that as "inmates" first, but
I'm
sure that's Freudian) are there because they are having a good time.
They may be there just 'cause they like playing music with each other
for three hours. They may be there 'cause they enjoy performing to an
appreciative audience that's not drinking and smoking. They may be
there because they like the community though they no longer enjoy the
actual dancing.
Whatever their motivation is (and I'm sure there are an equal number
of motivations out on the dance floor!) everyone gets what they need
from the evening, and we all keep coming back. This holds even
though a few of the musicians may appear to have an "attitude
problem." (Of course we've never had to deal with _dancers_ with an
attitude problem, right?)
Dale
--
I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have
one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day
difficult.
-E. B. White
23 Jun
23 Jun
12:48 p.m.
Jeff Kaufman wrote:
So lots of people come for a while, then stop. Some of the people
who stay around are just people who really like dancing. Many
others, though, are ones who have broadened into other community
roles: calling, playing, organizing, running sound.
Maybe some musicians lose interest in dancing, like other people who
lose interest in dancing, but instead of disappearing they remain
somewhat connected, playing for dances?
I decided to make a graph of this for me:
http://sccs.swarthmore.edu/~cbr/files/2006_2011.png
It's not perfect [1], but it does show that I've been performing more
and dancing less over time. It also doesn't include organizing, which
is harder for me to measure, but has gone up a lot.
Jeff
[1] Performing means calling, playing, or sitting in. From
2008-06-03 to 2008-09-09 I was working at pinewoods, where I did
a lot of dancing and not very much performing, but I wasn't
recording activities. I hurt my knee in march 2011, and while it
is mostly better I've been dancing less. During the school years
2006-2007 and 2007-2008 I was going to swarthmore folkdance class
regularly, so it's not on the schedule. I played for one class a
week and danced for one class a week (at which I usually called
one dance). Those months could be bumped up by 3 in each (on
average). Data is from my past [2]. I started keeping that log
about three months after getting into dancing, winter break
2005-2006, though I had danced occasionally earlier.
[2] http://sccs.swarthmore.edu/~cbr/past.html
22 Jun
22 Jun
8:44 p.m.
Martha --
Around here, for regular dance-society gigs, callers get the same as one
musician (if there are three or four musicians); musicians start getting
smaller shares in bands with five or more people. In BACDS, sound pay is
a half-share. (At balls and camps, sound pay is usually less than a caller or
musician gets, but sometimes gets bulked up if it includes renting equipment
owned by the sound guy.)
Contra-dance minimums at BACDS dances are 50/50/25 (caller/musicians/sound),
everything-else minimums (which pretty much means English dance), are 20/20/20
but we usually don't actually pay a sound person for English.
Palo Alto contra has a roster of sound people, some of whom get paid, some of
whom volunteer, but all of whom are very professional about it.
My Regency dance group has free admission for caller and musicians and nobody
gets paid other than that. The lead musicians are invested in the group and
will always either show up or locate a sub; other band members are more on and
off.
I see most but not all local English and contra callers dancing at dances
called by other people pretty regularly. I see maybe 40% of local musicians
dancing elsewhere. But in many cases killer musicians got recruited to play
for English because of classical background and skills, rather than rising from
the ranks of the dancers, so we sometimes see them get recruited into dancing.
We've certainly had a thing with bands who have been playing a long time for
whom the thrill of playing for a half-full room of dancers is gone. I've
heard that "I'd rather sit on my porch and jam with my friends than come out
for fifty dollars." (And if that's how you feel about it, that's what you
should do, and no harm done.)
And we also have people who make their living from music (patchwork of teaching
classes, private students, concerts, our low-paying dance gigs, etc) who come
out and dance just to dance, and that's beautiful when it happens.
-- Alan
The relative merits of pay for callers, musicians and
sound people would be
a good topic for discussion.
I'm both a musician and a caller, too, and while
calling is harder for me,
it's possibly because I've not been doing it for 60 years, which is about
how long I've been a musician. So you might say I put in the hard work years
ago on playing music and am putting in the hard work now to call. If I
became a sound person, I'd have to work pretty hard, too. But just about the
time that I got to be worth paying a lot of money for, it would probably be
easy.
But I am curious - in your groups, are callers paid
more, or less, than
musicians (on average)? How about the sound guys? And on what do you base
the amounts?
I remember a discussion on approximately this topic a
couple of years ago,
where someone had moved from a large dance community, where she was paid
rather handsomely, to a small community where everyone was a volunteer. If I
remember right, she enjoyed being a part of both communities, but noted that
the one difference was that the volunteers were more likely *not *to show up
if there was a difficulty, whereas the paid talent would show up even in a
snowstorm. You were paying, in other words, for professionalism.
Then there is a curious situation that has developed
here. Our musicians,
years ago, were part of the dance community. They'd come to our dances, and
at our dance weekend, they'd dance, and jam on the lawn, and we'd all dine
together. Then we started rewarding them with higher pay because we liked
their contribution so much. The result over time was that they started
treating it as a gig rather than as a social event. Now they show up about
ten minutes before dance time, they play, and then they either go home or,
at our dance weekend, they find some out-of-the-way place to jam, away from
the dancers. I just looked at our list of bands, and there's only one
person - okay, two - listed in our local contra dance bands that regularly
dance with us any more. Is that normal in your communities?
M
E
On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 6:52 PM, Cynthia Phinney
<online(a)starleft.org>wrote;wrote:
> At our series (a small local dance in rural
Maine), we divide the door up
> into one share each for band members, caller, and sound (sound gets one
> share) for bands of five people or less. Once the bands get over five
> people, the caller gets a larger share.
>
> My experience of being both a caller AND a musician, is that calling is
> significantly more work than playing. I also find that it is more work,
> usually, to call for a large band than a small one. Communication is more
> challenging, and there is usually more doodling and chatting in the
> background from the band. Plus - for us - some of our larger bands are
> students and so the music isn't perfectly honed for dancers, which means
> that the caller is needed even more to help keep the dancers on the phrase
> since it isn't so crisply defined by the musicians (our dance also has a
> significant percentage of inexperienced dancers).
>
> -cynthia
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: callers-bounces(a)sharedweight.net
> [mailto:callers-bounces@sharedweight.net] On Behalf Of Dan Pearl
> Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2011 12:50 PM
> To: callers(a)sharedweight.net
> Subject: Re: [Callers] Caller Fees
>
> Interesting!
>
> I chair the Thursday Night Dance Committee of NEFFA, which runs a weekly
> dance
> at the Concord Scout House, in Massachusetts. I would characterize our pay
> as
> good. Here are the basics:
>
> 1. We expect equal shares for all performers (musicians/callers). In only
> very
> unusual circumstances will we pay different amounts.
> 2. Guarantee (per performer) is dependent on # of performers. 3 => $155; 4
> =>
> $145; 5 => $125; 6 => $104; 7 => $89.
> 3. Performers who travel a distance (say over 1 hour) to get to the dance
> get
> $15 extra.
> 4. Bonus *is* dependent on attendance. We assume that if people came out in
> droves to dance, the performers probably had something to do with it, and
> they
> should be rewarded. For a well-attended night, it is not unusual for
> performers
> to make around $200 each. For an exceptionally well-attended night, they
> might
> make $300 each.
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers(a)sharedweight.net
> http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
>
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers(a)sharedweight.net
> http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
>
--
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance. ~ William Butler Yeats
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)sharedweight.net
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
--
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Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025
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5 comments
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Dale Wilson -
Jeff Kaufman -
Martha Edwards