Barleycorn music

[hudebnik]

So we're going to an in-person SCA event, "Barleycorn", next weekend. It's a camping event, with most of the activities taking place outdoors, so I'm not too worried about plague, but still... as one of shalmestere's T-shirts says, "People -- ew!"

We were approached some months ago about providing music for court, which includes the stepping down of one set of Viceregents and the investiture of another, which means the Royalty have to be there, which means a number of Royal hangers-on have to be there. I asked some questions about what they wanted where and when, and received no reply until after Pennsic, at which point (with 2-1/2 weeks' notice) I learned that we were not only to provide music for court, but provide background music throughout the day (not a problem, as that's usually what we do for our own enjoyment anyway) and "be in charge of music at Barleycorn... coordinate with other musicians to provide music throughout the event."

Gulp. There's only so much we can do (or feel like doing) on 2-1/2 weeks' notice, and we didn't do anything about this last week because Stuff Happened, but if you're a musician who plans to attend Barleycorn and would be interested in performing something, either at the Queen's Tea, at Court, or in the general background, please contact me or Rufina.

Comments

[cellio]

Um, wow. Why do people seem to think that "provide artistic thing" and "organize artistic thing" are the same thing? They are different jobs, and some people are only good at one of them. You are good at both, so that part's fine, but still... it sure would be nice if people asking for donations of time and effort could please try to be clear about which they're asking for.

[hudebnik]

Actually, we haven’t done a lot of performer-wrangling, so the evidence that either of us is good at it is weak.

There’s a reasonable argument that people who perform at least _know_ other people who perform, and know which ones are good and/or reliable, but as you say, there’s more to the task than that.

[cellio]

Oh, I thought I remembered you running classes for EK music events before the plague, but maybe I'm mistaken?

The networking part matters, but it's also the easiest thing for a non-practitioner to work around if there is a practitioner who's willing to supply some names. When thinking about whom to ask to organize a thing, I'll of course look for some level of interest in the thing (practitioner and fan both work there), but then my thoughts turn to organizational skills, communication, and stuff like that.

There's also a more subtle factor: there is usually some subtle social pressure on the person in charge of a thing to do less of the thing personally -- cast as making room for others, or encouraging others, or not hogging the stage, or whatever. If you put your best Doer of X in charge of Making X Happen, you can end up with less X from your best Doer of X, which is frustrating all around. (I acknowledge the flip side: nobody else helps, and your best Doer of X who was only planning to do that for an hour or two is stuck doing it all day and resents it. Also not good!)

[hudebnik]

Yes, that’s the one example I was thinking of: organizing classes at Musicians’ Day (an all-music event we ran about half a dozen times in the East, after Rufina co-ran a similar event a number of times in the Middle). But that’s not wrangling performers so much as wrangling teachers.

[cellio]

Oh, I didn't mean to suggest you'd wrangled performers before; I had no knowledge one way or the other. I meant that you've wrangled people, providers of services, before, and the essential skills there are mostly not about the subject matter but about the wrangling in general. So, you're good musicians and good at wrangling, so you'll do fine with wrangling musicians even on short notice, but that doesn't make the frustration go away.

[hudebnik]

Yeah. We were originally approached by the autocrat, who ... [nothing more I want to say in a public post]. I replied with some questions, cc-ing the incoming and outgoing Viceregents because I wanted to be sure I knew what they wanted. I never got a reply from the autocrat, but from one of the incoming Viceregents, who (to be charitable) may have been waiting for the autocrat to answer my questions, but eventually gave up and answered them herself.