Reviewing

The new ACCC guidelines: Australian law and online reviews (9 Dec 2013).

This is an Australian example, and important because I do reviews of albums, events and projects quite often. They’re also often solicited by the ‘authors’ or these texts – musicians, organisers, etc. And when I’m asked, though I always remind them that they review they get might not be a review they like, I feel as though there’s an assumption that I’ll write good stuff, just because I’m getting a free cd or tickets, or because we’re mates, or because I want to ‘grow the scene’.

Just a reminder: I might not like your stuff.

Milenberg Joys

Here are four bands playing Milenberg Joys. They all have quite different styles.
This is an interesting set of bands because they include some of the bigger name/most popular musicians of the moment, but each version has a distinct style, even though the bands have some members in common.

The Hot Jazz Alliance

The ‘Hot Jazz Alliance’ recording their debut album at ‘HiHat Studios’, April 2014. Michael McQuaid – clarinet, Jason Downes – alto sax, Andy Schumm – cornet, Josh Duffee – drums, John Scurry – banjo, Leigh Barker – string bass.

This is the most recent, and the band is pretty darn good. All the musicians have great projects on the boil, and they’re all Australian (Melbournian!), bar Josh Duffee and Andy Schumm. I have mad feels for John Scurry’s playing. I like this version a lot, but there are times when the band feels a bit square. You can see the drummer Josh Duffee has moments where he’s kind of pushing them to let go a little. This feel is probably because they’re playing in a studio, on camera, as they’re all usually a little rowdier in person. Except Michael McQuaid, who is very rarely rowdy :D This is very definitely ‘recreationist’ and has a very solidly ‘authentic’ feel.
The Hot Jazz Alliance have a new album coming out soon. Keep an eye out – it’ll be great.

The Milenberg Joys – Dan Levinson’s New Millennium All Stars – Hot Steamed Jazz Festival 2012

Dan Levinson’s New Millennium All Stars (http://www.danlevinson.com) play at the 2012 Hot Steamed Jazz Festival in Essex CT (http://www.hotsteamedjazz.com/)

Dan Levinson – Reeds
Andy Schumm – Cornet
Matt Musselman – Trombone
Gordon Webster – Piano
Molly Ryan – Guitar and Vocals
Rob Adkins – Bass
Kevin Dorn – Drums

I think of this as a very New York combination of musicians. Again, great stuff. But also a bit more into the ‘swing era’. At first the drumming annoyed me with all the hihat action, but then I understood. Webster is of course a dancers’ favourite (though I feel he might just have passed his apex), and this solidly swinging style makes for great lindy hop. I can’t really understand how that crowd of greybeards can just sit there, utterly still while all this is going on onstage.

“MILENBERG JOYS”: CLINT BAKER’S NEW ORLEANS JAZZ BAND at MONTEREY 2011

Clint Baker (cornet), Marc Caparone (cornet), Howard Miyata (trombone and euphonium), Mike Baird (clarinet), Dawn Lambeth (piano), Katie Cavera (banjo), Paul Mehling (bass), and Jeff Hamilton (drums)

This is a much rowdier performance, partly because of the instrumentation, but also because this is midway through a megajazzfan party, so they’re all warmed up. I think of this grouping as more San Francisco inspired, probably because of Clint Baker’s presence. Baker has been doing a lot of work with SF dancers over the past few years, including mentoring musician-dancers. When I listen to this, I think of that ‘new orleans revival’ sound that was big in the 50s. It has an old school vibe, but it swings pretty seriously. There’s different stuff happening in the drums again. As busy as the previous performance, and nowhere near as sparse as the first clip.

“MILENBERG JOYS”: THE EARREGULARS AT THE EAR INN (Oct. 21, 2012)

Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Matt Munisteri, guitar; Mark Lopeman, reeds; Rob Adkins, string bass.

This performance is different again. The Ear is a New York restaurant bar that squeezes a very good band into a tiny space, and the crowd may or may not listen to them at all. But you can be sure they bring the business. This performance has a chilled vibe again, but they bring the shit, and they’re really digging on each other.
Note the lack of drummer, but presence of bowed bass! Nerdgasmic!

While we’re talking strings, it’s intresting to see which bands use banjos v guitars. The first is definitely a banjo outfit (though John Scurry is a JOY on guitar as well), the second uses guitar, the third banjo, and the final guitar. The replacement of banjo with guitar is usually a cue to dancers that we’re going to hear a more swinging, later sound. Same goes for replacing tuba with bass – the bass replaced tubas in a lot of bands. All four instruments have different aesthetics, styles, and modes of playing which affect the ‘feel’ for dancers. If there’s banjo + tuba, you’re thinking more uppydowny, and if there’s guitar + bass, you get a little deeper in the pocket, more lateral momentum and a ‘swingier’ feel that makes you get into your swingout like Frankie.

You might have noticed that two of these videos were filmed by Jazz Lives. Michael Steinman is a generous, thoughtful jazz fan and author, who’s written about his approach to filming jazz in his post Expanding the community. I recommend his site. Just nail your wallet shut before you start browsing.

Code of Conduct – draft

Nicole Zonnenberg’s post A Contribution to the Discussion of Sexual Harassment in the Swing Dance Community (21 April 2015) is great because it clearly and simply explains how a code of conduct could have reduced distress or provented conflict in specific instances.

I’ve decided a code of conduct is essential for dance events. But they can’t be randomly copied documents of meaningless. You have to really mean what you say. And be prepared to act on this code. I’ve finally put together a code of conduct and am working on specific response strategies. You can read a draft version of it here on google docs. I am interested in your comments (though you’ll need to add them as comments to this post, not directly into that google document, because I don’t have time to moderate one million sites).

I’ve also started formalising and compiling my various workers’ agreements. I’ve been using these for years, though each copy has a slightly different form, as it is a negotiated agreement including the worker’s preferences and stipulations. This is important: this is an agreement, not a contract (it’s not legally binding!), so you must have consensus between all parties.

There are, of course, plenty of other relationships that require contracts or agreements – and these above should technically be covered by contracts rather than agreements – and you can find templates for them on the Arts Law Centre of Australia website. Note, you must pay for these.

[Edit]
A friend added an interesting comment to my post about this on facebook:

Really appreciate you keeping us all accountable Sam. I think Codes of Conduct are great but as you say, they’re useless if people don’t know how to take action with them.

This person has right-on politics, so I want to start here. Who is accountable for our actions? Are we only responsible for ourselves and what we do and think? Are we only responsible for the people ‘below’ us in a power structure? Are we responsible for each other – all of us? Are men responsible for the actions of other men, or just for their own? Is sisterhood an important idea, that women are accountable for the safety and actions of each other?
It’s a tricky one. I personally feel that I have a responsibility to look out for the safety of other women and girls. That’s where I start. I’ll also call out people who make racist/sexist/ist jokes. That’s my job, that’s one of the responsibilities of privilege (for me). To speak up.

So why don’t men call other men out on their behaviour? Why am I the one who’s telling men to stop pulling air steps at social dances? Why aren’t men doing this? Why did that male teacher try to discourage me from talking about and responding to sexual harassment by insisting that women harass too? What makes men feel like this isn’t their job too? Maybe they just don’t realise how powerful they are. Maybe they really don’t realise how much ‘safer’ patriarchy makes them.

Maybe this is a symptom of liberal individualism. This idea that we are own bosses, and we all need to work harder, and if we are poor or vulnerable, it’s our own fault for not working hard? Maybe this is the most important part of feminism: collectivism. Socialism. Caring about other people. Doing things for them and with them when we can.

I dunno. Aren’t you a lindy hopper? Isn’t the whole point of what we do to be awesome in partnership with other people?

I’ve been thinking about this. I don’t actually like the idea of one person making other people accountable for their actions; I don’t want to replace patriarchy with matriarchy. The thing that bothers me most about codes of conduct is that we all KNOW these things are totally not ok, and yet we still do them! And we don’t call other people out on their behaviour! So rather than deconstructing this top-down power dynamic, we reproduce it with a code of conduct, which we assume the ‘management’ or ‘powerful’ will enforce.
What I’d like to see is a) more women feeling powerful and in control of their lives and bodies, b) more men calling other men out on their behaviour – it’s not a women’s issue, it’s a men’s issue!, and c) more men regulating their OWN behaviour, and questioning their own assumptions about who and what they are entitled to do with their own and other people’s bodies.

But how do you do all that in the _context_ of patriarchy? The commodification of dance in formal dance classes doesn’t help, as it reinforces this power structure. …I guess that’s why I think you can’t talk about responding to s.h. without acting to prevent it with broader cultural change. Sets of rules and then punitive measures just reproduce unjust power dynamics.

…maybe the best sorts of response strategies are those that everyone can enact, not just an ‘authority’? Anyways, I’m still struggling with this part of the process.

Let’s get material about sexual harassment

As part of my 3-part response to sexual harassment in the lindy scene, I’ve started getting keen on the idea of visual assets. ie paper postcards, a useful website, etc.

My 3-part response:
1. Develop a code of conduct.
This is basically a set of ‘rules’, but also a clear statement of intent.
– the in-progress code of conduct and sexual harassment policy I’m developing

2. Working towards cultural change through:

Teaching in a way which explicitly helps women feel confident and strong, and provides tools for men looking to redefine how they do masculinity.
– using tools like the ones I outline in Remind yourself that you are a jazz dancer and Uses of history: Frankie as teaching tool

Teaching in a way which implicitly discourages sexual harassment, by encouraging good communication between leads and follows.
– I am keen on the rhythm centred approach as a practical strategy. Less hippy talk, more dancing funs.
– I like simple things like talking to both men and women about being ok with people saying no to you.

3. Developing strategies for actually confronting men about their behaviour.

– I talked about how I do this in class in Dealing with problem guys in dance classes
– I’m working up to addressing the more nebulous issue of sexual harassment by practicing on more concrete stuff like telling men to stop pulling aerials on the social floor
– Talking to and about men confronting other men. Because it’s men who are doing the dodgy stuff in most of these cases, and we need to ask men to take responsibility for their own actions. Whether those actions are harassment, or condoning/enabling harassment by not using their power to speak up.

Working on this, I’ve discovered that a bunch of words is next to useless. We need simple graphics, pictures and posters. Using a range of resources (the AFL’s response to sexual assault is particularly powerful and useful), I’m thinking that we need to add a few things to the prevention/response strategies. I’m considering making up a simple, powerful website and postcard outlining what’s ok, and what’s not. They have to have a light-hearted, fun vibe (because lindy hop), but they also have to be very useful and not too twee. The tone of these texts should suit the vibe of my business, but also give an idea of national and international lindy hop culture (as if there was such an homogenous thing!)
These two assets could work in concert with a poster or sign, and with a practical training program for teachers, door staff, and ‘safety officers’ (ie the people you go to when you need help).

Luckily, lindy hoppers have already gotten on to this. We actually have a discourse of ‘etiquette’, which is the way we manage and control social interactions in our scene. We also talk a lot about ‘floor craft’, which is another way of managing how we take care of ourselves and others on the dance floor. The basic message of both is ‘Look out for others or you won’t get any dances.” Lindy hop has a powerful shaming tool at its disposal, and we should make greater use of it.

I think we can just tweak these two sets of ‘rules’ a little to make them a bit more powerful and directly address sexual harassment and assault. A lot of dancers don’t want to address rape and sexual harassment explicitly because it’s a downer (and lindy hop is supposed to be all happy clappy all the time), and it’s a bit of a social taboo to talk about sex and sexual violence in an explicit way. And it’s really difficult to talk about sexual assault and violence without actually talking about breasts, vulvas, vaginas, penises, bottoms, and how we touch and use them.
Added to this are the broader social myths about women’s bodies, women’s sexuality, and men’s sexuality. The bottom line in responding to sexual harassment and assault is that you have to accept that it’s about power and violence more than it’s about sex and sexuality, and you have to accept that patriarchy exists. A tall order for people who ‘just want to dance’.

But I don’t want to reinvent the wheel when there’s fab stuff like this around:

Lindy-Hoppers-etiquette-1024x723

This is an etiquette guide produced by Holy Lindy Land, the Israeli lindy hop community. Which of course you should know about, because they sent an open letter of peace and friendship to the lindy hoppers of Palestine, which makes me cry like a little baby with the love. (You can read more about the two scenes’ work in this lovely piece).

I like this poster because it does simple things like replace my awkward description

Avoid ‘boob swipes’, touching a partner’s bottom, groin, upper legs – you know the deal. If you accidentally do so, apologise immediately. If you do this repeatedly, you will be warned, if not ejected from the event.

with
Lindy-Hoppers-etiquette-1024x723

I think that lindy hop could also do with some of the sharper edged humour that would help us get real about sexual harassment.

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There was a most excellent swing memes thread on yehoodi years ago, where most of the images are sadly missing now :( I’m especially fond of Good Guy Greg.
And of course tumblr brings the gif with people like lindy hop problems.

But these are, of course, not ‘official’ responses to sexual harassment. They are very important, because they give us a way to comment on issues, and also to ‘talk back to power’ if we don’t think organisations are stepping up.

I’m thinking something by an artist like Tomeito would be pretty useful:

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At any rate, I’m working on it. Slowly but surely…. :D

Resources:

  • Mobtown ballroom code of conduct (casual, human tone to the talk)
  • the SES (State Emergency Services) position sexual harassment as an occupational health and safety issue rather than a ‘women’s issue’ or ‘sexual issue’, and have some EXCELLENT training material available
  • AFL (Australian Football League) have Respect and Responsibility, a hardcore response to s.h. and assault which targets men (because it is a male-dominated sport), and uses the Australian discourses of ‘mateship’, ‘team’ and community responsibility (or club-loyalty) through the language of the sport (‘taking the tackle’ etc) in a powerful way. Their posters are great. I admit it, my Uses of History: Frankie as Teaching Tool in-class strategies are an attempt to do the same thing. To use the language and model of our most important and powerful cultural imagery as a strategy for dealing with sexual harassment.
  • Australian Human Rights Commission (for identifying and defining s.h., and researching the legal status of s.h.). My federal government’s current push to destabilise and ultimately destroy the AHRC is making me very angry.
    AHRC’s ‘know the line’ campaign, which feels a bit naff to me, but uses a strong poster campaign and website/poster tie-in.

Body stuff: making choices about your own flesh

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A friend has been patiently managing an ongoing thread about ‘obesity advertising’ on her facebook page, and I’ve chimed in today.

One of her friends wrote this excellently sarcastic reply to a piece about dieting:

I am NOT going to read the article, but in response to the tagline: Yes, clearly it is better to increase the pain and suffering of fat women through stigma and discrimination. After all, shame is strongly correlated with positive health outcomes.

For me, this point, that shame stops you being healthy and powerful, is the most important. I see it as directly related to the perpetuation of sexual harassment. If we are continually questioning our own worth, if we are taught to see men’s sexual desire for our bodies as the only reliable proof that we are ‘attractive’ and of worth, then we will tolerate sexual harassment. Even if it frightens and upsets us, we won’t speak up about it, because we are supposed to want this. A particularly unpleasant man commented in a public space recently that we need to “loosen up” and dance in closer position. As though our reluctance to be manhandled by unpleasant, aggressive men was a symptom of frigidity, and that we aren’t actually capable of knowing our own minds and making logical decisions.

It is this sort of bullshit that makes me very, very ANGRY and also very, very determined to encourage women dancers. Your body is important for far more than what it looks like. It is a wonderful machinery, and a woman dancing is mighty. Your mistakes should be confident because they teach you. Your dancing should be brave because it is YOU dancing, telling us something about music and the way you feel and think. You can lead, you can follow, you can solo dance, you can do balboa or charleston or whatever the fuck you like, in whatever way you like, so long as you respect your partner and yourself. And being fat or skinny will not in any way affect the value of your movement.

I replied to that comment on facebook with this:

The thing that bothers me most about all this, is that we’re continually reminded of our bodies, and how we should be thinking about what we look like, all the time. It fills up our brains. It makes us ask, over and over “Do I look ok?” The answer, of course, will never be a definitive ‘yes’, because what is ‘ok’ changes every day as well. Yesterday your eyebrows had to be skinny, today they have to be thicker. Yesterday you wore skinny jeans, today you wear leggings.

Various industries benefit directly from encouraging and perpetuating this anxiety about your personal, bodily value. Governments like ours make it clear that women’s bodies are not as important as men’s (the amount of money spent on commemorating the loss of Anzac bodies vs the lack of money spent on discussing domestic violence makes that very clear).
Even our parents and families and friends are recruited into policing our bodies: the aunts who ask if you’re really eating that second serving, the mothers who put girl children on diets, the fathers who won’t let daughters walk alone at night, the parents who ask when we’re going to provide grandchildren.
The idea that I might use my body simply for my own pleasure and satisfaction is utterly sinfully wrong: being fat is a ‘lack of control’. Eating for pleasure is ‘naughty’. Enjoying sex is ‘problematic’. Dancing until your heart stutters and your calves tighten is ‘dangerous’. As an adult, I should be allowed to choose how I enjoy my body. But enjoying your body, being happy with the way you look is not allowed. That’s how patriarchy works.

My most serious problem with this, is that it takes brain time away from what we can do with our bodies or our brains. And of course, if we are busy doubting ourselves and bodies, we don’t have time or confidence to stop and say “Hey, what the fuck, patriarchy? I’m a fucking amazing writer/engineer/doctor/parent, and all this time and money I spend on what my body looks like is detracting from the time and money I can spend on being a writer/engineer/doctor/parent.”
In an example, women on average spend so much more time on grooming than men do. Yes, some men are groomers, but women spend a lot more time on hair removal, makeup, clothing choices, etc etc. And I decided a long time ago that I’d rather spend that hour every day writing more. Reading more. That’s an extra hour a day I can spend on tap practice. On laughing at jokes. An extra hour every day that I get to spend doing things that make me feel good, rather an hour every day that I spend assessing and inspecting my appearance.

For me, specifically, this constant nibbling at my self esteem stops me questioning patriarchy. If I’m always worried that I’m too fat, too big, too small, too never-going-to-be-right , then I won’t have the confidence to question bullshit.

So, as practical examples, if I’m feeling anxious and low confidence, I won’t confront that man who’s been touching his female dance partners’ boobs all night. I won’t get on the microphone and say my own name to advertise my own DJing/teaching/event. I won’t put my hand up for a staff DJ position at Herrang. I won’t start my own business.
The bullshit about ‘obesity epidemics’ has a direct effect on my confidence: I won’t get up on my feet and speak up.

So I say NO NO NO and fuck YOU to talk about diets and obesity epidemics and all that shit. I eat what I like, I exercise too much, and I assess the value of my body through my ability to breathe freely, to dance too much, to bend and move easily, to bring me pleasure and ridiculous joy.

And I take a great deal of satisfaction in telling men to fuck off when they try to mansplain the value of my own flesh.

Mobile-friendly websites are important for lindy hop (durh)

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Rolling out the mobile-friendly update is an interesting thing: I’m particularly interested in the way it affects dance event sites (of course).

Dancers use dance sites with mobile devices (particularly during a big dance event weekend), and most people first come to lindy hop through a google search. So mobile-friendly websites with good googles are super important – essential – to a dance business. Yet most dance websites are built by inexperienced/non-pro designers/code monkeys, and aren’t terribly mobile friendly.

This is partly to do with budgets (we work on very tight margins), but more to do with inexperience. Spending money on your website is a very good investment, but many dancers can’t bring themselves to shell out that sort of money, and if they do, they don’t know how to find or judge a good web designer.

We have really really shitty interwebs in Australia, so a lean, mean, mobile website is super important for a dance business.

(image just stolen from that google blog article)

Running a live music gig for dancers in Sydney

Just fyi, if you’re curious about how much it costs to put on a band gig in Sydney:

– band: $1500 (you can pay less, esp for a smaller band, but this is the going rate for a function gig, which is what dancers are, essentially)
– band rider: $100 – $150
– incidentals (printing, lamps, etc etc – random door kit stuff and floor things): $50-$100
– good sound + lights (engineer + gear hire + gear delivery, pick up, set up): $1000
– venue: $500 min (this is crazy cheap. $800 is more likely. You can go cheaper or more exy, but you’ll need a bigger, more exier space to cover your expenses; NB you need to pay for 2 hours before and 1 hour after the event – so you pay for 7 hours for a 4 hour gig)
– paper PR postcards: $50 (just for a small, local print run)
– band break DJ: $50 minimum

Stuff that costs, but that is often ‘invisible’ and hard to quantify:
– volunteer comps (4 hour gig: 11 comps; ie 11 people who don’t put money in the door)
– general PR (online facebook pimping, website, writing copy, photos, etc): 1 million hours (at least 2 days to put it all together, then a couple of hours a week for FB posts, answering emails, etc)
– design work for flyers/websites/fb icons, banners, images
– liaising with printers, picking up print jobs, etc
– buying stuff and transporting stuff (bottles of water, gear, documents, snacks, band riders, crates of beer, etc etc): this will cost you at least $60 in petrol/car hire/however you do it
– storage for your cache of ‘gig gear’ – lights, cash boxes, microphones, signage – all the bits of shit that take up space in your house.
– liaising with bands, DJs, MCs, etc, to be sure they all know what’s going on, and what they have to do/play/say
– public liability insurance
– APRA fees
– general business fees (accountant, etc)
– tax on income/GST if you need to collect it
– paypal or trybooking fees (take about $1 or $2 off each ticket for that)
– having the right forms for all workers (eg declaration of non-disclosure of ABN for DJs, proper invoices/receipts, etc) -> you need to research these, prepare them, print them in advance.

Upfront expenses:
You can’t just hope you’ll make enough on the night. You need to pay for things before the night.
– a $150 or $200 float (a bunch of $5 notes): you need to have that upfront
– venue hire (and bond, usually – anywhere between $100 and $500)
– band rider, incidentals, printing, etc

~$3400

You can totally do it cheaper. But there’s an economy of scale: you need more people to pay $$ so you can cover your band and sound expenses, and that usually means you need a bigger venue which costs more.

For this, you’d need to get at least 100 people paying $35 to cover your costs. But you’re not really safe, and you’re definitely not making a profit. You’d really need 100 people at $40 a ticket.
Basically, you shell out 3.5k, but you can’t guarantee you’ll cover your expenses. If it’s your first time, you have to double the amount of time it takes to do everything, and you’re less likely to find a good sound guy or band that knows its shit.

You can do a smaller live band gig for about $800, if you pay no venue hire, don’t have a band break DJ, have mad connections, hire a tiny/very new band who do their own sound. But this will not be a ‘top shelf’ gig, and you won’t get big numbers. You won’t be able to charge more than $20, so you’ll need at least 50 people.

The biggest problem is that dancers don’t drink. So you don’t have bar sales to subsidise your event, the way all other live music venues do. And you can’t afford to have a band every week, so you can’t offer them a residency, for which they’ll charge you less. If you don’t have a stable venue with good facilities, you have to keep hiring and moving gear and infrastructure (which also eats time and energy).
So the most important expense is networking: getting to know bands, sound engineers, venue managers, finding good printers and designers and so on. And that just devours time and energy. It’s also especially hard if you’re a woman in this male-dominated industry – it can be hard ‘networking’ (ie buddying up) with a bunch of very hetero, quite sexist men. It’s not always hard, and some men are totally wonderful (I’ve found a really wonderful group of musicians, sound guys, venue managers and printers here in Sydney), but they are 99% men, and it’s a very macho/masculine scene. You need to divest yourself of the traditionally ‘feminine’ characteristics that’ll stop them treating you like a professional.

Each time you run a gig, you run the risk of something going wrong – a dodgy band, shitty sound, terrible numbers. This isn’t just a problem on the night, it creates bad publicity and affects your reputation, which later makes it harder to sell tickets. So when you first start doing these gigs, it’s quite important to start with manageable, achievable goals, so you get experience in a lower risk environment, and start building your reputation. You can also take time to learn how to manage the stress of running a live gig, and how to delegate properly so you can manage them properly. Yes, you can save money by doing everything yourself. But all the worst events are the ones where the manager cannot delegate, and so no one is actually managing the thing.

Once you have some experience, skills, and profile, you can scale up. But even when things are going well, things can still go wrong and give you a scare. So you need to have recovery plans in the back of your mind. Both financial and promotional. Of course, at the end of the day, you can’t play it 100% safe – you need to take risks. And for most of us, it’s these risks that bring the stress, and which leave many of us vowing never to do this again.