[Cynnabar] Generalist Events vs. Niche Events or Opening the Can of Worms

[Aaron Elkiss]

It is fun; it's also a lot of work. (So is my day job.) I also like to
dance, but I rarely get to do that at Terpsichore. I am not a
professional musician, but even so I have many opportunities to
perform and receive at least a token payment to cover transportation
expenses. It's also the norm in every dance group (including our
Society) to recognize that the musicians are providing a service and
ought to be appropriately recognized. There are many who would say
that it is fundamentally disrespectful to ask a musician to pay in
order to be allowed to perform. That's why I had originally asked that
musicians at Terp be comped -- it makes it much easier to recruit
non-SCA musicians. (Jadzia and I usually pay anyway, because we want
to support the Barony; if we stopped comping musicians we would likely
just pay the site fee for some of our musicians.)

With the current structure, it's hard to decouple the idea of "we're
all pitching in to do what we like to do" from making it feel like
we're being required to pay in order to volunteer our time. It's part
of why I like the "suggested donation" -- it means that we can all
give a donation because we want to support what we are doing without
feeling like we're being required to pay to perform, sit at gate, or
prepare a feast.

-a

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:53 PM, Charles J. Cohen
<charles at eecs.umich.edu> wrote:
>
> I have a Terp specific question: is it fun to be a musician at Terp?
>
> - Midair
>
> p.s. I realize fun is hard to define. I have fun sitting at gate. The
> fun comes from being a greeter, hanging out with other people at gate,
> and also from serving the barony. So I can easily imagine musicians
> traveling a quite a distance to serve and pay a site fee to perform in
> the evening. I can also see some of them seeing it as a chore. Hence the
> question.
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