In New York city we have always paid callers more. A decision was made a very long time ago - beforei knew what contra dancing was - that callers should make more money. In New York city the callers made about thirty percent more. We have raised the fees of musicians since then and not of callers, but they still have not caught up. There are still people around who know the exact history and who made that decision. I am sure if you ask any of the older musicians thay can give you the reason in a way that is less than friendly. Ask one of the older callers -and there description as to how this happened will be much nicer. Merle On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Sue Robishaw <sue(a)manytracks.com> wrote: -- *Merle McEldowney* *212-933-0290* _______________________________________________ Organizers mailing list Organizers(a)sharedweight.net http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/organizers

Interesting. As a musician, organizer, and mostly former caller at this point, I think it makes little sense to pay callers more. Sure, they might work harder during the night itself, though that depends heavily on the instrument and musician involved (it is a lot of work to play mostly melody on fiddle tunes on sax for three hours, and I spend more time practicing with a band for each gig than most callers spend on programming and preparation for one evening). But in terms of what it takes to get to the point of competently performing for an evening, it's not close. Musicians use a piece of equipment that costs thousands of dollars and takes thousands of hours of training and work to get to the point of being able to play for a full evening. Callers don't. I know of no callers who spent hours literally every day practicing calling for a decade, spent tens of thousands of dollars on training for their craft, etc, but plenty of musicians have done this. I called my first full evening, which went ok, though not seamless, about two years after the first time I tried calling at all. I'd been to a couple callers' workshops, had practiced calling a little bit, under 40 hours total, and had probably spent some amount of money not exceeding $100 on calling materials. I played for my first contra dance after spending over $100,000 and 10,000 hours learning the craft of my instrument (including attending conservatory, practicing 10+ hours per week for at least a decade before playing my first dance, etc). I'm not saying that everybody's experience is the same on both, or that they should be compared in exactly those terms. But looking at just how it's a little bit more work for the caller during the dance itself and thinking that justifies paying callers really ignores the vast majority of what musicians do to get to that point, and seems to me to be grossly unfair. On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 2:28 PM, Jeff Kaufman <jeff(a)alum.swarthmore.edu made a callers of is description and our -- David Casserly (cell) 781 258-2761 _______________________________________________ Organizers mailing list Organizers(a)sharedweight.net http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/organizers