Archiving Jazz Fest: A Conversation with Rachel Lyons, Archivist, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Archive (Video)
- - Hello, everyone.
- I'm Melissa A. Weber,
- Curator of the Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz,
- a unit of Tulane University Special Collections,
- or TUSC for short.
- - [Rachel chuckles] - [Melissa] And I'd like to welcome you
- to our session, Archiving Jazz Fest, hosted by TUSC,
- and featuring Rachel Lyons,
- Archivist with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Archive.
- Today's event is presented as the closing event for the TUSC exhibition.
- It's titled, "Music is the Scene": Jazz Fest's
- First Decade, 1970 to 1979, which features materials primarily
- from TUSC collections, most of which have not been widely seen or heard.
- The exhibition has been on view in the TUSC Gallery since March 4th
- and will close in the gallery tomorrow at 4 p.m..
- However, the digital exhibition will remain on view past tomorrow
- as part of Tulane online exhibits.
- If you haven't seen it yet, we invite you to view it online
- at exhibits.tulane.edu, and I'm going to post
- those links in the chat.
- Our event today is dedicated to hearing directly from Rachel,
- who I'd like to thank for her gracious assistance
- through my curating the TUSC exhibition.
- And like you, I'm looking forward to hearing about her important work
- as archivist for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation since July, 2000.
- She has grown the archive from a collection of a few dozen boxes
- in an un-renovated building into a vibrant research facility
- with numerous collections and extensive offsite storage facilities.
- In addition to maintaining and managing the collections,
- she has made presentations and curated exhibitions about New Orleans culture
- and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
- For Jazz Fest's 50th anniversary,
- Rachel played a key role as compiler,
- writer, and producer in the creation
- of the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings Box Set,
- Jazz Fest: The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
- With the COVID-19 pandemic cancelation, she partnered with New Orleans community
- radio station WWOZ FM to produce three Jazz Festing in Place programs.
- These 64 hour programs featured Jazz Fest recordings
- exclusively from the Jazz and Heritage Archive, and reached listeners
- in 195 countries and territories worldwide.
- Rachel is going to share a presentation, and after that we'll be able
- to have conversation with a few questions from me and also from you.
- Please feel free to share your questions for Rachel about her work,
- or Archiving Jazz Fest, in the Q&A section at the bottom of the screen.
- And now I'm thrilled to pass the mike to you, Rachel.
- - Oh, well, thank you so much, Melissa...
- and I really appreciate this opportunity to talk with you
- and to hear what some other folks have to say
- and ask about, you know, the work that we do archiving.
- [chuckles]
- And I'm just going to share my screen...
- Okay.
- I'm just going to start because I know many of you
- all are already familiar with the festival, but I'm going to give
- a little precursor about the festival and about the New Orleans
- Jazz and Heritage Foundation, which is who I report to.
- And then a little bit more in-depth about the archive, but I want to make sure
- that everybody starts on the same page in terms of the origins of the festival.
- So the festival was started by George Wein in 1970.
- That was the first year.
- And at that time he met Quint Davis and Allison Miner, who were both
- working in the Hogan Jazz Archive.
- Allison was actually employed there, and Quint was a student worker.
- And they initially met because they had apartments near each other on Frenchmen,
- so they were across balconies from each other.
- So prior to the actual festival, they actually had met.
- So, they were brought on as the young people that can do some work
- for little or no money, because of course this was a new operation.
- The picture at the top is George
- with his wife, Joyce, and then the woman in white is
- Sister Gertrude Morgan, whose a very famous folk artist.
- And she-- actually it's her artwork that is the cover
- of the very first program book.
- And...
- Okay, there we go. [chuckles]
- So a lot of this information
- I achieve from doing those exhibits that I've done.
- So at the top is actually an architectural drawing of the 1972 festival,
- which is the first year at the Fairgrounds.
- And I really love these two aspects together...
- because they really show
- how the footprint of the festival and how it continues to grow.
- Curtis and Davis, that's Quint's father's
- architectural firm, who came in and helped.
- And there are other drawings like this that are actually up at HNOC,
- the Historic New Orleans Collection in the [inaudible].
- So the festival was always incorporated as a nonprofit.
- It was always the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation.
- And a lot of the early energy of the festival...
- that took up most of the time and attention.
- In the mid to late '70s like '76, '77, '78 is when they started
- to be some proceeds from the festival going into the foundation.
- And it was at that point that the board of directors
- started to develop philanthropic work.
- So our community grants program started at that time.
- It still exists now.
- We give out over a million dollars a year in grants to the community.
- But one of the other things they did was to buy the first part of this
- very long series of buildings that we now own on Rampart Street.
- To the left of the 1205 door is the Liberty Bar.
- So it's kind of apropos, but you would go in that middle door,
- which doesn't exist anymore, and you'd be on the back side of the bar
- and then you'd go upstairs to the offices.
- So this is the foundation today.
- That corner spot that was the Liberty Bar is our main entrance.
- There's a small gallery in there where we do hold community events.
- And then you can see there's two other townhouses that
- go down the block from there that are also our offices.
- And then the white building beyond that is the George Wein
- Jazz and Heritage Center.
- So George Wein...
- gave us a lot of his support throughout the years,
- and the building is named after him and in his honor.
- This is a 10,000 square foot building that we opened in 2015.
- It is a completely free music school in the historic front of the building,
- there's a room with every instrumentation in there.
- There's a room of pianos, there's a room full of drums,
- there's a room full of bass, and there's a room for vocals.
- So, we've--
- it was a $10 million renovation to do that.
- And then we have a small performance venue in the back,
- which holds about 200 people.
- So, we use the building a lot, and then we also--
- there's a lot of community events that also happen in the building.
- And the nice thing about having this building is we have a lot of parking now
- in the back, especially like when we're having the kids dropped off and picked up.
- It works out very well.
- So the foundation is organized in terms of assets and programs.
- The archive is an asset, WWOZ is an asset,
- the Heritage School of Music is an asset, and also Jazz Fest.
- So we're the core activities that--
- I guess the way to describe it is we are the ones that have the things.
- So beyond office programing,
- we're the ones that have all this physical material,
- whether for me for collections, and OZ will have soundboards
- and other technology, and of course recording trucks
- that are at Jazz Fest.
- We run programs under economic development.
- One of the first things we did when the pandemic hit was
- we gave out a million dollars in funding across the state to musicians,
- and then we gave out another million dollars of our own money.
- And we also partnered with Spotify, they helped us raise money.
- Michael Murphy helped us raise some money.
- So we do look for key partnerships.
- And most recently, Music Rising partnered with us
- and they ran a guitar auction and raised $1.4 million.
- And that's all money that came to us for the financial partners at work.
- One of the other things we do,
- and these are all the upcoming dates for our community,
- what we call the community festivals.
- They're all free. We do have people asking
- So if you can give, we appreciate y'all giving
- and certainly coming out and attending.
- So, we've merged the Creole Gumbo and Congo Square Rhythms
- into one festival this year.
- But other than that we just keep them,
- keep them rolling and keep them out there.
- This also is in some ways economic development
- because we do see this as providing work and jobs to not just musicians,
- but also the food vendors, and the stage workers, and people like that.
- Now we're going to move on to the archive.
- So Allison Miner, who was the festival founder,
- was alsothe founder of this archive.
- She started it in spirit
- from her work at the Hogan.
- So the core of the collection is the recordings from the Music Heritage Stage.
- That's a picture of Allison
- on the very first stage in 1988,
- and then it was started to be recorded in '89.
- So we have just shy of a thousand interviews at that point.
- Allison did pass away in 1995, so she's no longer with us.
- She was in her forties, so she was quite young when she passed.
- So this is the archive.
- The building was donated to the foundation by Ian Hardcastle.
- It was the old [inaudible] hardware building for any of you old school
- New Orleanians out there.
- The space is quite small. We're a thousand square feet.
- You can see our shelving. We're really at capacity.
- We have three different configurations of shelving.
- But the good news is, is that there's always offsite storage.
- So this is what the building looked like when I got here.
- You can see the boxes were everywhere.
- It was sort of crumbling in another state [chuckles],
- but it was literally...
- get a folding table and buy a computer.
- So, that's what I had to do.
- Now these are some of our offsite storage areas.
- The two at the top are in town,
- and we do-- you can see we have large decor items with the signage,
- some furniture from furniture makers,
- business records-- we have a lot of that.
- The picture at the bottom is all of the early
- OZ reels that were here when I got here, 1300 reel-to-reel tapes.
- Those are stored in Tennessee, but we had to pull them back
- because we ended up getting money to digitize them after Katrina.
- So, that's Dolores and she's five feet tall.
- So that'll give you an idea what 1300 reel-to-reel tapes look like.
- This is the Michael Murphy collection.
- All these materials are in Los Angeles.
- They...
- it's a diversity of media.
- He filmed Jazz Fest from 1989 to 2009.
- So about half of this collection is Jazz Fest
- and the other half of it is other-- more music related materials.
- But it's all very relevant in terms of our mission.
- So we're extraordinarily fortunate to have this collection.
- You've heard a lot of it if you've listened to Jazz Festing in Place
- or if you have the Smithsonian boxset.
- So here is our Smithsonian boxset from 2019.
- This was an amazing project.
- We did it in under a year when it normally would have taken
- like a year and a half.
- So I'd never done anything like this before.
- But you just buckle up and you put your head down and you go.
- Dave Ankers with OZ is also a producer on this.
- His help was amazing.
- Carrie Booher, who runs the OZ social media,
- she helped me a lot with the...
- photo research, which was an enormous help because I had my fingers
- in all these other little pots there but then also all of my regular work, too.
- But I'm very proud and it got to number three
- on the Billboard jazz charts.
- So, we mentioned the Jazz Festing in Place so that has all...
- happened, you know, you can see those.
- But also recently we created this documentary
- with Michael Murphy and WYES, which is our local public
- television station.
- And we just got news two days ago that it won a Silver Telly Award,
- so we're very excited.
- It is on a national PBS distribution,
- so 270 stations picked it up across the country.
- So we're super excited about having that.
- And then, of course,
- now, if y'all don't know, there's a big movie coming out about Jazz Fest.
- It's Kennedy Marshall are the producers, and...
- that's a big two hour movie.
- They filmed the 2019 Festival in IMAX.
- So there is a ton of amazing footage.
- So I'd say it's more...
- more of a performance space of the festival,
- but it also has probably about 25% historical information in it.
- And so I worked very closely with the producers
- in identifying assets that are here, but also in other archives in the city.
- So, I worked very closely with them to get this movie out the door
- and produce, which I was very pleased and excited
- to help them.
- So that is the end of my...
- talk. [chuckles]
- - Okay, thank you so much for that presentation and...
- we're now going to get into a little conversation and then Q&A.
- And I'd like to remind everyone that if you have a question for Rachel
- about her work, please type it into the Q&A section
- at the bottom of the screen and we've got quite some time.
- I will start with a few questions for you, Rachel.
- So...
- I'm not sure if you heard about this or not, probably so.
- I just saw a tweet last night that this past Tuesday
- the U.S. Senate agreed by unanimous consent on a resolution
- that honors the 1970 Jazz Fest,
- and you gave a little bit of insight
- into the origins of the festival, but I was wondering if you could share
- a little more detail on how the festival started?
- - So, I will say
- I am-- I mean, we're very fortunate.
- We did an interview with this gentleman-- I do a series of institutional oral
- histories as well, so we'll interview past presidents of the board and,
- you know, longtime stage managers, or people who work at the festival.
- So pretty much anybody who's core
- to the festival and to the Jazz and Heritage Foundation.
- So one of the people that we ended up interviewing was Earl Duffy,
- and he was the very first board president of the foundation
- and it was fascinating because he was from Boston.
- He was big with the Hotel Motel Association.
- He was the one who got the call from the local chapter
- here in the mid '60s saying...
- We'd like to start a festival down here.
- And they were looking for some help
- with financial money, but also other support.
- Now, Earl is from Boston
- and he used to go to George Wein's club, Storyville.
- That was in Boston for many years.
- George was born and raised in Boston, I don't know if y'all know that.
- So anyway, so we did an extensive interview with him.
- And what I found is people that have very short periods of time, they...
- they remember things.
- So he was our board president in '70 and '71
- and he really gave
- a very colorful detailed description of what it was like
- to come down here from some place north and run the Royal Sonesta Hotel,
- but also about, you know,
- it really starting in that he had almost like the pre-work with them.
- And what he found when he got here in '70
- and he was asked by Lester Kabacoff, Pres Kabacoff's father,
- who owned the Dauphine Orleans, to come in and be the board president.
- And he did and he found this sort of wild
- group of guys, you know, that were still living in
- kind of a Mad Men lifestyle as his board members.
- These are people that he was inheriting from the '69 festival,
- which is not our festival because it was not incorporated as the foundation.
- So it was basically him and Darrell Black,
- the one very useful guy on that board that really pushed
- and made the festival happen in '70 along with George.
- So... yeah, so it was a very interesting time and just--
- it was the good ol' boy network, you know,
- and a little bit of Mad Men thrown in there from everything he described.
- He was a lovely man. He was such a loving--
- he came down for the ribbon cutting
- and he and George got to talk and see each other.
- It was touching, these two 95 year old guys.
- - [both chuckle]
- - I'm going to ask an archives related question.
- You know, you were speaking about the amazing Smithsonian box set
- and you had to work on that project in addition to your regular work.
- For the average person who doesn't know what the regular work
- of archives involves, describe what that is.
- - [Rachel] Right.
- So...
- we're so small here.
- I mean, you know, other archives are small,
- but they're in libraries.
- You know, so there's some other institutional memory.
- You know, in the foundation here we have 13 full-time employees.
- We do not have internal IT.
- We've gone full-blown forward. We're starting a digital archive.
- So a lot of my work is-- I'm handling a lot,
- especially now with requests to use the materials.
- So I do a lot of administrative stuff and then I periodically dip into collections.
- Delores, who used to work with us full-time,
- she still works with us part-time.
- And then we hired Joe to start the digital archive.
- So we have that.
- I've been so sad without our volunteers because we've had--
- for as long as I've been here we've had this fabulous group of--
- you know, they've varied over the years, but they come in every week.
- They come in for 4 hours and we give them real projects
- to do that help us with the collection.
- Like, nobody's picking up my dry cleaning.
- You know, nobody's making photocopies, but we do give them
- actual work of archiving, and that's very important.
- So whether it's-- could be something digitally based
- or it could be something that's a physical collection.
- We break up parts of it to get it moving forward.
- - [Melissa] Okay. - So yeah, so we haven't instituted
- our volunteer program back quite yet, but I'm looking
- forward to getting that done either during the summer or in the fall.
- - [Melissa] Okay.
- And what are the types of materials that your archive includes and
- what are items that are the most popular that are requested for access?
- - Well, audio and video is a big one.
- 'Cause everybody's making a documentary.
- Very few-- well, I guess, no.
- I would say video and photography are probably bigger.
- Audio is not so much.
- And I think it's because-- especially with the internet
- and everything, social media, everything is so visually based,
- that the audio isn't quite as attractive.
- So our scope of collecting is the history of the foundation.
- So it's pretty much anything foundation or festival related.
- We do dip a little bit into the '69, '68 festival,
- but there are other archives in town that have stuff for that.
- So if something happens to come in our door,
- you know, from those festivals we'll keep it.
- But for the most part we're not actively collecting those materials.
- But I do say I have the history of the beer koozie
- because I have some very early prototypes
- of, like, a hard styrofoam,
- you know, with the ring, and it has our logo on it.
- But we also have a lot of artwork.
- So the Helis Foundation gave us...
- I think about $150,000
- to buy artwork for the Wein Center.
- So...
- yeah, so we have everything,
- even our beer koozies are insured under our fine art policy.
- But we keep track of all of the materials, whether they're in one of our
- storage units or whether they're hanging on a wall at the main office.
- That falls under our purview. [chuckles]
- - And then also there are
- the digital collections, which I love, because anyone,
- wherever they may be on their computer can access various collections.
- Tell us about the digital component of your archives.
- - Okay, so that's also--
- that's really in transition at this point.
- We do have an online catalog.
- Only some of the things on there can actually be viewed.
- So basically it's the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage from 2012-forward.
- And of course, all of this is dealing with copyright law,
- making sure we have the right to do it.
- But also,
- we have to be respectful because it's not just our relationship
- with the music community and the arts community in town,
- but also OZ's relationship with those folks in the festival.
- So there's very little that you can actually-- well I say
- very little but 2012, you know, 40 interviews a year.
- There's actually quite a few videos you could watch in our online catalog.
- And then we're in the process of setting up a DAM
- for all of our born digital photography, which I manage nine photographers...
- every year at Jazz Fest.
- There's nine each weekend that photograph for the archive.
- So, they're photographing stages.
- They're photographing the food, the people, the culture,
- what the festival actually looks like, like the landscape of it.
- So anyway, yeah.
- And then a lot of what we have
- is not even necessarily in our catalog at this point.
- Like all of the Michael Murphy films and audio,
- but that is something that we are accessing and having people use
- for their work, you know, because we're not going to stop
- just because, you know, it's not in our catalog.
- We're pretty aggressive and very focused on the user
- and trying to make things as available as possible.
- - [Melissa] Okay, yeah.
- - So call me, call me or email me is the answer if you have a question.
- - [chuckles] Aren't the posters now online?
- I mean, not the posters, the programs.
- - Oh, yes. So we did scan and OCR
- all of the program books, and those are in our online catalog.
- They're downloadable. They can be completely searched.
- So if you know that your father,
- your grandfather or whatever worked-- because even the staff is in there.
- So you could find staff names if you just did a nice last name search.
- So that's been really sweet.
- Yeah, and that's a very easy way of doing it.
- You can just download 'em.
- So we're very happy about that, getting resources to the people.
- - [Melissa] Awesome.
- I have just one more question and then I'm gonna shift
- to some of the questions that have been popping up in the Q&A box.
- So...
- as I understand and know,
- no archival repository can represent all stories if materials are not there.
- For instance, while I was curating the TUSC exhibition,
- you shared info with me about the 1978 KOINDU effort
- and I realized that we didn't have materials at TUSC to represent that story.
- So thank you for giving us permission to display
- KOINDU photos from your archive
- that are included in the in-person version of the exhibition.
- So my question is two parts:
- One, can you share the story of KOINDU with our audience?
- 'Cause it's a fascinating one that I didn't know.
- And two, are there materials that are missing in the
- Jazz and Heritage Archive that you wish you had or could find?
- - So there's one thing I forgot from the previous question
- I'm just gonna plug, which is also from the archive website.
- There is the Jazz Fest Database, which is a very simple utility,
- and it is based on the program books.
- So, that's a caveat that...
- if there was a last minute cancelation,
- we may not have known it from 1986 or something.
- But it is completely searchable of everybody
- who's ever performed at Jazz Fest.
- We put in the canceled Jazz Fests too,
- so just to make sure that we were gonna have a complete record.
- So the canceled Jazz Fests are in there.
- There's about 25,000 records in the Jazz Fest Database
- that is open for anybody to search.
- I actually use it quite a bit, like on my phone, I'll just run into it.
- So with KOINDU...
- we did curate an exhibit.
- We have a couple of collaborators, some cultural anthropologists
- that have studied Jazz Fest, and their names are
- Helen Regis, she's at LSU, and Shana Walton, she's at Nicholls State.
- And...
- they were really the lead people in curating that exhibit
- and doing some oral histories around it.
- So it came out of--
- in the mid '70s there was sort of a crackdown going on.
- A lot of the street vendors on Canal Street, who are predominantly
- African-American, and the city was cracking down on them...
- and sort of hassling them and not really liking,
- you know, sort of how it was beginning to look like a street fair
- and not so much like a main shopping corridor like you would have thought,
- you know, a decade before.
- And with that interaction
- the African-American Jazz Fest Coalition came up as well.
- So they...
- were putting pressure on the foundation to really start,
- like-- the impression was, of course, that we had a ton of money.
- But the reality was we started
- growing and having some money, you know, because we bought a building.
- There was that sort of effort.
- So they were very firm about the fact that they wanted
- more participation in the festival.
- And there was a big call.
- They were threatening to boycott.
- And what happened at that point and--
- Kalamu ya Salaam was one of the leads
- with this group, along with [inaudible] and a handful of other people.
- So they basically--
- and George Wein actually writes about this in his New Orleans chapter in his book
- about going to the Saint Bernard Project and having a meeting with them.
- But basically what came out of it was KOINDU...
- was started, and it was like a festival inside of a festival.
- And-- but they worked directly,
- you know, because it had to be facilitated into the Fairgrounds.
- So there had to be some kind of overlap
- in administration, but it was solely run by the
- African-American Jazz Fest Coalition or KOINDU group.
- Those...
- that organization fell apart...
- and it was primarily due
- because there was a difference on how it was going to be administered.
- So it's kind of interesting when I was doing research on it,
- because in the board meeting minutes, it was like, well,
- we don't know what's happening.
- But at this point, eight years later, they still had an imprint there.
- So, what happened was, they were in court,
- the two aspects that were suing each other.
- And then...
- Tom Dent, who was our director at the time,
- noted writer from New Orleans, he was our executive director, and Kalamu ya Salaam.
- They both ran the Congo Square Writer's Circle.
- And they renamed the KOINDU area,
- Congo Square, and it became more integrated
- into the festival itself at that point which was 1988.
- So... - [Melissa] Thank you.
- And also are there materials that you wish you had or could find?
- - From KOINDU?
- - Oh, just related to Jazz Fest.
- I remember you asked about the logo.
- That could be-- the original logo prototype.
- - Oh, okay.
- Well, I mean, a lot of that I found in my--
- I found out in my research along the way.
- I still learn things though, every day.
- I mean, I just always have to tip into something that I learned.
- It's...
- you know, there was that big article for Jazz Festing in Place when I...
- talked about finding the Wolfgang's materials,
- the recordings from the 1970 Jazz Fest.
- So that was something I knew existed,
- that I didn't know where or how to get to it, you know.
- And that was something that I had thought about and looked out for, for...
- you know, 20 years.
- I'd go to archives conferences and there'd be other radio archivists
- there and I'd say, Oh, do you have any Pacifica Radio,
- do you have any Radio Free Europe or, you know--
- so, there are things that I know-- Oh, you know what, Melissa?
- I have something up on my board right there.
- And it was a letter of somebody-- we were talking about it.
- It was something that mentions
- a recording and I was talking to you about it.
- I can't remember what it was, but that was like three years ago.
- - [both chuckle]
- - [Rachel] So there's always things that are piloting around.
- But I don't have a Holy Grail at this point.
- - The nature of archives work. So now-- Oh, yes?
- - I just want to say one thing.
- The sister collections, what I call my sister collections, you know,
- the Historic New Orleans Collection, which is, you know, that's that
- Michael P. Smith photo behind me.
- You all have always been so gracious when I've been doing my exhibits
- and going in and letting me look through Dick Allen's papers, you know,
- those are just so-- I mean, I was talking to the guy at Arhoolie during Jazz Fest
- and I mentioned some of what I learned in Dick Allen's papers.
- So doing the research and finding out more about what is around us
- has been so helpful and it has really-- the support of everybody else
- in the State Museum have really helped this archive
- to get some really firm roots and to grow.
- So I can't thank everybody enough in our archival community in New Orleans.
- - Awesome, awesome.
- Okay, there's a lot of questions that we have about 20 minutes.
- So let's start with a question from James,
- who was wondering if you could talk a bit about the difference
- between archival handling of recordings and materials,
- for example, digitizing old reel-to-reel tapes or films
- versus non-archival amateur type practices
- and some of the difficulties working with old tapes.
- - So because we're such a small archive, we don't actually do that kind of work.
- We would-- we send that work out to experienced vendors
- to do that digitization.
- So, I can answer just enough to be dangerous, so I won't.
- [chuckles] But he can if he wants...
- can drop Joe, our digital archivist, an email.
- It's jstolarick@jazzandheritage.org and
- I'm sending you his way because Joe has done
- archival digitization.
- He worked for George Blood for many years.
- He's also... audio engineer
- and has worked for OZ for many years running one of the trucks at Jazz Fest.
- But he's also a Master's in Library Science.
- He was basically designed by God for us.
- - [both chuckle]
- - [Rachel] But Joe could probably help with that
- question better than I will.
- - Okay, next question.
- "What is your favorite item in the collection?"
- - [chuckles]
- [Rachel] So...
- I'll just talk about a general category.
- So, we collect the unofficial stuff.
- So...
- I love it when you see, like, community participation
- in Jazz Fest or in the foundation.
- So, for example,
- one year at the Krewe du Vieux parade,
- they parodied jazz fest and it was some scathing-- you know,
- they really do satire at the Krewe du Vieux parade.
- So collecting all of that material was very exciting for me.
- I've seen...
- people scattering ashes at Jazz Fest.
- They were passing around a water bottle and shaking something.
- I was like, what is that?
- And then I realized that they were doing a funeral at the festival
- so I took out my phone and started taking pictures.
- I went over, contacted the people, we interviewed them
- and found out who this gentleman was that died and how important it was.
- So I think that it's [inaudible] people make this festival
- and we really encourage and I enjoy that.
- That sort of participation in the collection.
- - Okay, the next question is, "Do you all offer PDs to educators?"
- I'm sorry for the person who asks this, T.J., I don't know what PDs are.
- So if you want to type that in the chat and let us know.
- Professional development! Okay, to educators.
- - Call me. We can talk about it.
- Nobody's asked me that question yet. So let's see if we can figure that out.
- Is that good? [chuckles]
- - [chuckles] There are a few questions
- and you've touched on various aspects of them already.
- I'm going to go down and just in case...
- to see if you want to touch on some more aspects.
- So Margaret asks, "Does the archive contain historical Jazz Fest posters?
- I have a signed copy of the [inaudible] Jazz Fest poster."
- - A signed copy of what year?
- - The 1976.
- - Oh, yes we do collect and I would love to see your poster.
- [chuckles]
- I'm pretty sure we already have that one.
- We have a couple of gaps in our poster collection
- but it's not '76.
- - Also, "How does one gain access to the archives documents?
- Is there a website and what can I do on the website."
- And I just posted a link to the Jazz and Heritage website in the chat.
- - Yeah, it's always best if you take a look at our...
- online catalog and what we have up.
- And then from there just give us a call or drop me an email and
- that's sort of when we-- because we're so small here
- and we only have a maximum capacity of like four people
- that can be here and currently there's three of us here.
- So, yeah, just give me a call and we'll see if we can--
- if we have materials that are of value for what it is you're working on.
- - Okay, and a question about volunteering.
- "Do you all need volunteers to assist with the archive?
- How do you apply?" [chuckles]
- - So there's no real application,
- but I usually start with an email and if you can either send me a resume
- or if your interest in archiving is opposite of your professional life,
- just tell me what your general interest is.
- We try to give people projects that they're gonna like [chuckles]
- and not ones that they're gonna be bored with.
- So we do interview and we try to make sure that we have the right match
- before we just take volunteers in.
- But like I said, we also haven't quite started up yet
- with volunteers since Covid.
- But, I can't say enough how much work, like--
- that Jazz Fest database, that was 90% volunteers
- that built that for us and we are forever grateful.
- For people that can do that kind of data entry, it's just lovely.
- And it turns into this beautiful product.
- - Frank asks, "What projects are on the docket?"
- - [chuckles]
- Because we've had so much demand
- since 2019 for use of the collection in documentaries.
- So my big project this summer is going to be...
- looking at setting up, like, a strong administrative system.
- It's not very exciting, but it's that.
- Joe's big project this summer
- is getting our DAM up and running for all of our photography.
- So it's going to be born digital, but then we're also hoping
- to put in, like, digital contact sheets from some of our older photography
- into the DAM so that it's more easily accessible and researchable.
- So, those are our two big projects currently.
- Dolores is here.
- You know, we buy artwork at Jazz Fest, so...
- she's here working on physical collections that have come in
- because we have some new artwork and some other materials.
- George Wein's estate has sent us
- some materials from his house that he had related to New Orleans.
- So that was really lovely.
- But yeah, no, our-- and then potentially we're gonna--
- we have two big collections on the horizon.
- So I'm getting ready for those to come in as well.
- But yeah, no, we always have something that can be done.
- And as archivists know, there is basic processing
- and then there's more detailed processing.
- So, it's always a matter of nibbling away and making things more accessible.
- - Awesome. What kind of paper records do you have at the archive?
- - [Rachel] Oh, good golly.
- So...
- a lot of our paper records are more administrative.
- So, it would be, you know, in terms of, like,
- the Heritage School of Music and trying to recreate a lot of that.
- That's actually probably a pretty big gap in our collection
- because that was like a program that was at SUNO
- and it wasn't...
- it was always a prize of the foundation.
- They did not...
- take very good care of getting those records here.
- So when SUNO flooded in Katrina,
- you know, most of that documentation is gone.
- It was just flooded.
- But we are-- we do do annual
- collecting from inside the foundation and then also over with OZ.
- So we have a lot of administrative papers here in the archive
- that help us to recreate our own history and then also pamphlets
- and fliers, things like that that are more what we would call ephemera.
- And then, of course, digital, you know,
- because David Freedman, the previous Director of the--
- General Manager of OZ, you know, he came and gave us three laptops.
- So, [chuckles] you know, then we're processing
- those materials so that the "papers" go digital too.
- - We have a few more minutes for more questions
- if you could type them in the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen.
- There is one from Jay,
- who says, "Can you say more about how money raised from Jazz Fest ticket
- "sales fund the many community programs that benefit musicians and music workers
- and fund the Heritage School of Music?" - [Rachel] Sure.
- So...
- the founders of the festival, which is basically George Wein.
- His company was Festival Productions Incorporated.
- And at a certain point I believe in 1998, Festival Productions New Orleans
- was established as Quint's company.
- So, from the very beginning the foundation has contracted with
- FPI to produce the festival.
- So there's always been a contractual relationship
- between the two organizations.
- One of the other things that I learned was,
- in some oral histories, was that was pretty much
- what FPI was doing because, you know, they did the Newport festivals in the '50s.
- So, they would always either partner
- with a local nonprofit or create a nonprofit to...
- basically bring their festivals into being.
- So, we were one of the ones where we were created as a nonprofit.
- So anyway, so we contract with festival productions.
- There is a festival budget. It is a part of the foundation.
- It's overseen by our board of directors.
- So...
- then when the revenues come in,
- that's when the money comes into the foundation at the end of each festival.
- And so we get,
- I don't know how many millions of dollars, a few million dollars a year.
- All of our 990s are online...
- so, through GuideStar, if you guys want to see what
- foundation financials are.
- But we take that money and then reinvest it into the community
- with the whole diversity of our programs.
- And you can see all of our programs online too.
- We just did a big redo of our website and it's awesome.
- - Ann posted a question for you in the chat. She says,
- "Question from left field. Has anyone from HowAhYa!
- ever consulted the archives to help design the Jazz Fest shirts?"
- - No. So the HowAhYa! shirts are developed by Buddy Brimberg,
- who is also the person who makes the posters.
- It's Art4Now...
- and I'm blanking out on her name, but she's a silk painter
- and she usually has a booth of her own original work at the festival.
- So he primarily has been working with her
- consistently for probably the last 15 or 20 years.
- And it's those two who come up with what the design is going to be.
- And it's approved through the festival too, all of that.
- Anything that comes out gets approved through the festival
- because it's, you know, official merchandise.
- - And Ron has a question and would like to know if you have a
- Fest highlight or peak experience at Fest.
- I'm assuming that doesn't necessarily have to involve archival work. [chuckles]
- - Okay, so, I'll give two.
- One, I would have to say I think it was 2008.
- Richie Havens in the Blues Tent.
- I literally thought the tent lifted up, like six inches, on his final
- version of "Freedom."
- It was truly one of the most stunning things I'd ever seen.
- And then one of my favorite little parts--
- so, you know, this year the festival did a great job.
- They're really doing sustainability and they're really working to integrate
- and make that a department within the festival, which is...
- fabulous and I love it.
- But way back when,
- we used to partner with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts,
- and they would be out there
- sort of picking up the bottles and cans and taking them.
- But of course, you know, you get a bunch of 12 year old kids and
- tell them to walk around and pick up cans, so maybe not the most effective.
- But there were other points in festival history
- where we have been looking at doing recycling.
- Anyway, so my birthday is during Jazz Fest, it's April 26th.
- And...
- it was in the morning
- and there was like nobody out there yet, so before the gates opened.
- And I still had like two dollars starter on my pinned self,
- and these four Boy Scouts started just belting from
- 30 feet away, Happy Birthday [chuckles] to me.
- And that was just so sweet.
- And they committed and they sang the whole song.
- So I was just like walking across the Fairgrounds
- to go from one spot to the other, I don't know, I was,
- you know, working, so I was going to go and do something.
- And then I stopped and got serenaded by these four little Boy Scouts.
- It was just darling. [chuckles]
- Those are my two little favorite, I think...
- you know, and it talks about the spirit of the people there too, both of them,
- you know, in terms of the crowd and the audience and, you know...
- and they were my performance, my Boy Scouts.
- - [both chuckle]
- - There aren't any more questions in the Q&A box so I will ask one final question
- because we are just about to reach time for today.
- What is...
- what is your favorite part of your job at work
- and what is your favorite thing about archives?
- Why are your archives important?
- - So, my favorite part about this job-- and I'll just say this,
- which is I don't have a Master's Degree in Library Science.
- I have a Master's Degree in Arts Administration.
- I thought I was going to be
- a curator and not an archivist, but this is where I am.
- But now I curate an archive, right?
- So...
- my favorite part about this
- job is that it's been positively boot straps.
- You know, you saw those pictures-- [sirens outside]
- you know, we're in the French Quarter, so there are...
- I don't know if you can hear it, but there are policemen outside.
- [chuckles]
- So I love the fact that everything I've done,
- I've had to figure out myself, like I never stop learning.
- I mean, I can't get bored here
- 'cause as I've often said, I don't need another piece of paper
- to come in the archive and I can stay busy for another ten years.
- But there's always a chance to learn something new
- and do something new and it tests my mettle.
- And I think it makes me...
- better informed about the profession of archiving,
- and then also about...
- the collection itself.
- So I love the fact that I never--
- like, this whole thing that I have to do this summer.
- It sounds really boring, setting up a licensing administrative system,
- but it's another system that has to operate inside this system of archiving.
- So it all has to work together and relate.
- [Rachel] And then what was the other half? You had another--
- - [Melissa] Oh gosh, why is
- the Jazz and Heritage Archive important in your words?
- - Oh... [chuckles]
- the Jazz and Heritage Foundation Archive is important because it is...
- almost like this super salient...
- version of what Louisiana is.
- We play our collecting pretty tight, but the foundation and the festival,
- meaning FPI, they've done such a great job
- creating an authentic experience
- about Louisiana, including-- you know, we have a folk life [inaudible] out there.
- And, you know, the materials that we collect from that, like,
- the material culture of Louisiana is documented here as well.
- And, you know, it's just--
- that's why the festival is important, I think.
- And they've talked about this archive, you know, this was years ago,
- maybe going to a university.
- But if it had, it would have stopped
- because it would have been a smaller part of something much bigger.
- But with me here and us having a building
- and a very dedicated lens on putting these materials together...
- for the future is huge.
- You know, that's why this archive is important.
- - Perfect. Thank you so much, Rachel, for your participation today
- and all your work over the years and to come.
- And I would also like to encourage each of you to keep in touch
- with both our repositories.
- I just posted in the chat links to TUSC and to the Jazz and Heritage Archive.
- And you can always reach Rachel
- or me in our respective archives with all of your questions.
- Thanks so much for joining us today, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.
- Bye-bye, everybody.
- - Bye. Thank y'all.