Music of the people..Don't make me laugh

Subject: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Johnny J
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 09:17 AM

It used be an old saying that folk clubs were full of teachers(Substitute any academic or middle class profession) who wished they were miners whereas the pits were full of miners wishing they were teachers.

Of course, music esp traditional should really be played, sung, and enjoyed by all the people but it does seem to be a mainly middle class pursuit.

Likewise, folk clubs and festival organisers.... Do you really need to be University professor or lecturer, head teacher, academic, doctor or whatever etc just to book a few gigs and lay out a few chairs?

Maybe, it's just an Edinburgh phenomenon but I suspect it's fairly well spread.

Please let us know your views while I duck... :-)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Stower
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 09:39 AM

Johnny, for this discussion to be useful (and I think it's a really interesting one), we need to ...

1. define 'middle class' and 'working class'. Are these meaningful terms any more? Arthur Scargill said (and I certainly wouldn't agree with everything he said) that working class means anyone who has to work for a living, anyone who doesn't own the means of production. That's almost everyone. It certainly includes teachers and lecturers, and is not based on culture ('middle class culture', 'working class culture') or income (as such). Some of us used to define a 'working class' person as one working in industries which barely exist any more or are actually extinct in the west.

2. show that folk clubs are exclusively or predominantly populated by the middle class. Impossible, I'd say, working on the definition above. Who has done such a survey? When and where? What definitions were in use?

3. show that somehow the 'middle class' are 'to blame' for excluding the 'working class'. If the so-called 'working class' are absent by choice, because they'd rather be listening to something else, there's not much the rest of us can do about it. The 'working class culture' that gave rise to the spread of these songs has been dead a long time.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 09:56 AM

Might have been an original insight 250 years ago. Not a lot has changed in Edinburgh since then.

We have moved on a bit in our understanding, though: try Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Johnny J
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 09:57 AM

Yes, all of the above comments are true but the majority of the population still don't have "high power" or "professional" occupations. Otherwise, we'd all be loaded with money. ;-)

It just strikes me that many of those involved in the organisational side of things, albeit on a voluntary basis, are quite over qualified for the job.

I'm not suggesting that they are being exclusive nor that they don't love the music (or have a perfect right to do so).

However, their own values will inevitably be reflected as regards booking policies, encouraging new members etc. So, is there a danger of this leading to the promotion of more "high falutin'" and esoteric type of events and a very narrow representation of what is actually available?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 10:07 AM

Johnny J said:-
"is there a danger of this leading to the promotion of more "high falutin'" and esoteric type of events and a very narrow representation of what is actually available?"

Yes, there is.

What do you do if you don't like this?

Organise something yourself that fits in with your own beliefs/expectations.

And don't kid yourself that this phenomenon is exclusive to folk clubs. My past experience of left wing activism in the UK is that is was dominated by the "professional" classes.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 10:09 AM

Maybe not exactly the right thread, but I have been watching for a place to put this quote...thinking of all those who have had teachers whol told them they couldn't sing, etc. My apologies if you don't think it fits in here:

"Use what talents you possess: The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best."   ---Henry Van Dyke

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: paula t
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 10:11 AM

So few people are prepared to make the huge effort and give up the time involved in running a folk club,and we all owe them such a lot for the service they provide on a purely voluntary basis.
I'm sure that if anyone sees a "gap in the market" and makes the effort to do something about it, they will be welcomed with open arms. There can never be too many folk clubs!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: artbrooks
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 10:35 AM

Well, the person here in Albuquerque (New Mexico, USA) who began and directs our folk festival is an office clerk (and plays a mean bass). Her principle assistant is a lawyer. The steering committee includes a secondary-school teacher, a mid-level city bureaucrat, a professional musician, a couple of retirees and a few people that I have no idea what they do. The one who generally hosts the song circle (sing-around) is a hospital social worker.

I think all of us would consider ourselves to be both working class and middle class. We all work for a living (or live on a pension derived from our employment) and we all have all of the trappings of middle-class living (or have chosen not to).

I don't think anyone involved owns "the means of production", and I don't think that there is University professor or lecturer, head teacher, academic, {or} doctor in the bunch...not that people in those occupations don't work. Are you implying that academics somehow shouldn't be allowed to enjoy folk (whatever that is) music and be involved in it's production and presentation? Rather pseudo-Marxist elitist of you, IMHO.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Amos
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 10:57 AM

AFAIAC, anyone who CAN organize, and does so in the interests of spreading folk music, is welcome to do so. Folk organizers are like folk musicians inthe respect some are more eclectic than other5s in their tastes.

"Don't make me laugh" is a bit of a sardonic comment, not to say bitter. Do you object to people who are in the "middle class" actually caring topromulgate folk music because they make too much money? OR because they've sold out to the organizational methods of society, for better or worse? OR what? Who do you think should take responsibility for organizing such events?

A

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 10:58 AM

I suppose as long term unemployed, I'm not working class. Does give me a lot of free time for leaflet folding though.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: theleveller
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 11:43 AM

"the pits were full of miners wishing they were teachers."

Well there are very few pits and very few miners left. Or steel workers. Or even farm workers. Those that aren't unemployed have probably retrained and may now be teachers - or in IT.

Listen to Ray Hearne's new album 'The Wrong Sunshine'. Ray was a South Yorkshire steel worker but got a degree and now works for the WEA (actually he's mrsleveller's boss). Damn fine singer/sonwriter and a damn fine folk musician. If you're interested in 'music of the people', his songs are well worth a listen.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: stallion
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 11:54 AM

I sing songs of the Napaleonic wars but I wasn't there! (Nor would I have wanted to be) I think the curious thing is that UK "folk" music is the domain of the culturally assumed intellectuals whereas popular culture seems to manage without it, or does it.
My recent experience is that one has to take the music into places where people are, do it and then tell them it is english traditional or whatever and see the look of surprise on their faces. It isn't the music it is the negative publicity people have attached to it that makes it un cool and so good old teachers and the like saw fit to keep it alive, fair play to em.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Gervase
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 12:28 PM

I'm a builder and farmer. Does that count? Trouble is, I never have the time to go to folk clubs.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 12:44 PM

Middle class means You cant answer the original question in a forthright and open manner, without first making sure that any other middle class person reading this thread is aware of your,education and position in society.
You will also be struggling between the need you feel to establish your entitlement(to whatever you feel it is others have or may have or may be plotting to have), and the not "quite niceness" of having to do so.
Mustn't seem too needy eh?
Now which cheek did I leave my tongue in?
LOL

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 12:52 PM

I was a miner...

Not the Billy Bragg lyric but a fact for what it's worth. I used to go to folk clubs and ok, occasionally sit and smile whilst a person who fits into your stereotype sang songs about mining.

Then the next morning, get my tallies and swing that ruddy rope.

All this about working class, middle class etc does wind me up somewhat. It is, I suppose, something to do with heritage? No matter. Working down the pit made me, I suppose, working class. But owning my own house? Owning a decent wine cellar, well stocked? Being married to a doctor? Having an aga in the kitchen?

I'm not working class. I'm not middle class. I am Steamin' Willie or whatever silly name I use next.

(Apologies to my mate who has the same IP address and gets hot & bothered when the moderators block me for being silly.)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Leadfingers
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 12:54 PM

I MAY be totally off the mark , but the O P 's phrasing sounds to me like someone with their own agenda !
I consider myself to be Working Class , but HAVE run Folk Clubs and been assisted by ALL sorts of people with ALL sorts of jobs - A Bit like artbrooks !
The difference is that MOST people who DO attend Folk Clubs are the ones who actually USE That lump of matter between their ears , and dont follow blindly the dictats of The Media !

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 12:57 PM

Yeah well, you shouldn't go educating the working classes. They'll get ideas above their station and start wanting to be teachers and such. Next thing, they'll start getting interested in folk music.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 12:57 PM

I don't give a bugger what section of "society" the people who run/help to run folk clubs, singarounds and sessions come from. They do it - and that's all that matters. Three cheers to them.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Marje
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:03 PM

I think most people in the clubs/sessions I go to work for a living (or have worked - there's a growing number of retired people now). I also notice that there's a high proportion of well educated people - people from professsions or from a university background. But it's not exclusively educated middle-class - I can think of one farmer and one gardener who are regulars at sessions.

So why this imbalance? No one decides that you need a degree to run or attend a folk club - the participants are entirely self-selecting, and make every effort to include and welcome anyone who wants to join. And money can't be an issue - playing at a session is free, and attending a folk club is a cheap night out by any standards. Folk music is cheap hobby.

If some social groups are under-represented, that's their choice. The social mix of people who play golf, or go to bingo, or join a choir, or go to the dog-racing, will not be a cross-section of society either.

Why shouldn't well educated people enjoy folk music? The tunes and songs of our forebears belong to us all. Even if we now work in a bank or a school or a hospital, we probably have ancestors who worked on the land and in the factories, who built the railways, or who fought against Napoleon.

Sure, it's the people's music, and we are the people!

Marje

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Folkiedave
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:06 PM

One of the first folk clubs I went to was organised by a printer. One of the first singers I ever met drove a dray wagon.

The next was organised by a painter and decorator and his wife. A woman who painted heraldic shields took over.

Sometimes you need to look past the obvious. Three of the members of our morris team have degrees gained at the age of 40 plus and one of them started life down the pit. Where would you put them?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Johnny J
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:11 PM

Thanks for all the replies so far...

Of course, I'm playing the devil's advocate a bit here and seeking to provoke some strong responses.

I do actually help to organise "folk music" myself and my previous occupation could be described as middle class...at least many of those within that particular job aspired to such things! :-)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:18 PM

"Three of the members of our morris team have degrees gained at the age of 40 plus and one of them started life down the pit. Where would you put them?"
You don't put morris dancers anywhere,mate.
You can guess where they are gonna be.Bar,chippy,outside dancing etc.
But you cant put them there.
This one who was down t' pit?
How many legs has he got?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:20 PM

"I do actually help to organise "folk music" myself and my previous occupation could be described as middle class...at least many of those within that particular job aspired to such things! :-)"
Hmm what did I say? eh? eh?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:23 PM

"I don't give a bugger what section of "society" the people who run/help to run folk clubs, singarounds and sessions come from. They do it - and that's all that matters. Three cheers to them."
Well said that chap

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: The Sandman
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:23 PM

Yeah well, you shouldn't go educating the working classes. They'll get ideas above their station and start wanting to be teachers and such. Next thing, they'll start getting interested in folk music. Quote Snail.
thanks Bryan,ah thats my problem,one o level, I have got above myself, christ, I will be getting punctuation right next, I might even learn to sing properLY too, and even play the concertina in the correct style.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: jacqui.c
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:27 PM

IMO folk music as it stands today probably wouldn't exist without the people who collected a lot of the old songs from the original singers. I think that most of the collectors would probably fit into the category of 'middle class'.

Looking back, before the era of radio and TV, people had to make their own entertainment and so it is probable that, the lower down the scale one came as far as class was concerned, one of the main entertainment may have been singing songs that related to their lives and to history. nowadays, with the dirth of entertainment options available to everyone, folk music has taken a real backseat, partially due, I think, to the reputation it has as being dated.

In most of the folk groups I've been to there is a real mix of people from many walks of life. Their common interest is in the music. whoever is keeping the music going, I would say thanks for that.

Johnny J - have you tried to get a folk session going in your area? If not, why not?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Folkiedave
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:31 PM

You can guess where they are gonna be.Bar,chippy,outside dancing etc.

DANCING?

You are having a laugh mate.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: melodeonboy
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:32 PM

"Don't make me laugh"?

Don't make ME laugh! I'm sure the people who go to the folk clubs that I frequent would be most amused if other people assumed they were - what is it? - university professors, lecturers, scademics etc.

They are a real cross section: some employed, some unemployed and some retired. Some financially comfortable, some solvent and some broke. And yes, there is one teacher among them, but he has shown no signs yet of wanting to be a miner!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Stower
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:38 PM

Johnny J: "Music of the people..Don't make me laugh". Mmmm. People who you seem to consider unfit for folk music are people, too.

You've started an interesting debate. Are you going to look back in and respond? Please do.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: stallion
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:40 PM

Ay up, we have a university proff. an archealogist and an electrician in our happy band!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Acorn4
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 01:56 PM

I suppose the presence of teachers may be down to the fact that their job has to do with communication.

No so sure about the accountants and civil servants.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Ernest Wright
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 02:16 PM

It's not particularly surprising that there should be an above-average number of educationalists/academics (or just people with a historical bent) within the folk movement, because folk music (if by that term you mean the sort of songs/tunes collected by Child, Sharp, etc.) hasn't been the 'music of the people' since the late 19th or very early 20th C., and even then those 'people' tended to be in rural agricultural areas yet to catch up with the encroaching music hall fashions.

Despite any wishful talk of a 'living tradition', to continue to perform this material (if we talk of a largely static canon of 'traditional' repertoire that is mostly 100-300 years old) in the 21st century is a very consciously antiquarian, anachronistic pursuit (as is playing Bach, Mozart, etc. in the classical realm), usually defined *against* the electrified pop music to which the vast majority of the population listens. Of course, the urban, anachronistic folk revival has itself become a tradition, but it will continue to be a specialised one precisely because of its historicist bias.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 03:11 PM

Dammit -I didn't know I was supposed to ask them what they did before I let them into the club!

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 03:15 PM

Ah but Linda we would have lied to get in anyway.
LOL

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 03:18 PM

Which cross section are you in?
Or maybe "Cross" isn't strong enough to describe how you feel?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 04:20 PM

OK, I will list the occupations of all the friends I can think of who are fans of folk music.

I'm retired from several office-type jobs. My wife is an elementary school teacher. One friend is a nearly full-time folksinger who does a little craft-making on the side. One is an occupational therapist in treatment center for delinquent teenagers. Two are chiropractors. One is a self-employed garden designer and builder. One has a couple of part-time jobs: she is a museum docent and a shop assistant.

I guess we're all middle-class and college-educated, but not "academics". As a matter of fact, in my last job, I worked at a university in a non-academic capacity, but I became acquainted with lots of professors. I can't recall any of them ever saying they were interested in folk music. There was an anthropology professor who loved Indonesian gamelan music. Does that count?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 06:42 PM

Whilst it doesn't fit every folk community precisely Ernest's very accurate description cannot be denied in the vast majority of cases in the UK. I am proud to have been part of the Folk Revival in the 60s when most of us were working class with aspirations and fire in our bellies, but I'm afraid it's true, we're now all in our 60s and decidedly middle class however you want to define it. (And for most of us the fire has gone out!)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 07:23 PM

Folkiedave

one of them started life down the pit.

Good grief! The bosses wouldn't even give his mother a day off from the coalface for that.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Ernest Wright
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 11:37 PM

Just browsing through a history book (Gareth Stedman Jones's 'Languages of Class'), I found an amusing quotation reinforcing my point above, referring to changing popular tastes in the 1890s:

'Formerly Shakespeare plays and ballad singing had been popular items of a social evening. Now music hall entertainment was all that was demanded. According to a report of a social in one South London club:
"A gentleman so far forgot himself as to sing two Ballads at the South Bermondsey Club the other evening, and was hissed by the younger people present, who left the hall in disgust. This is the result of giving the younger people 'Hi-ti' and 'Get Yer 'Air Cut', and pandering to a vitiated taste."'

(Cf. Mudcatters denouncing e.g. The X-Factor for 'pandering to a vitiated taste' some 120 years on.)

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,999
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 11:43 PM

"Music of the people..Don't make me laugh"

Humourous songs are meant to do that.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 11:58 PM

Ernest W - that v interesting. 'Ballads' there, I would take to mean what we would call "Drawing-Room ballads' like 'HomeSweetHome' or 'Maud', rather than what we Catters would mean by the term?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Ernest Wright
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 12:38 AM

Presumably the drawing-room kind, yes, but the account idealises them in the same way that 'we' would tend to idealise the Child kind.

The essential paradox at the heart of the 20th C. folk revival is that the very concept of 'folk music' only really comes into being at the point when it is identified by middle-class collectors as something threatened with extinction. The 'source singers', of course, did not use the term, nor did they necessarily distinguish between 'traditional' and 'commercial' songs in their repertoire, with the consequence that the former did eventually become extinct in their 'natural habitat', with the exception of a few outposts like Blaxhall Ship.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 02:36 AM

"The 'source singers', of course, did not use the term,"
Some did, some didn't, but most of them had their own names or means of identification for the songs we call 'folk' (see relevant threads).
"nor did they necessarily distinguish between 'traditional' and 'commercial' songs in their repertoire,"
Yes, they most certainly did - this has been argued ad nauseum elsewhere and apparently remains one of the great myths that haunt this subject. I woud be interested to learn on what evidence people who make this claim base it on.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Howard Jones
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 03:50 AM

I don't actually know what most of the people I know through folk music do for a living, or what class they fall into. What unites them is a shared interest in the music. That's all that matters.

The terms "working class" and "middle class" are becoming meaningless, since the lifestyles of both are increasingly similar. Is a factory worker with a degree working class or middle class? A plumber may be self-employed and perhaps employs others, is he working class or middle class (especially as he may be earning more than someone in a traditional middle-class profession)?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 03:58 AM

Howard said "I don't actually know what most of the people I know through folk music do for a living, or what class they fall into2

Oh good! And I thought it was just me...

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 04:06 AM

I take it the common link here is music?

In the words of Sir Thomas Beecham;

"The English don't appreciate music, but they love the noise it makes."

Not trying to make a point, just the ramblings of an ex miner / singer / songwriter who used to love playing in folk clubs but not any more. Can't say why, I don't really know but whenever I do go to a folk night, I confuse nostalgia with a good night out. The nostalgia is still there.... just.

Sorry, but that's how it is. I browse these pages to see if any old mates turn up.

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 06:36 AM

It is virtually impossible to give an answer to such a simplistically phrased statement.
Did the o.p. mean - did folk song come from 'the people'? - If so, yes, they most certainly did.
It is obvious from the use of vernacular, the familiarity with detail, the descriptions, - etc, that bothie songs originated with the Aberdeenshire farm-workers, that the forbitters came from the experiences of sailors who sailed before the mast, that the songs of the cotton industry came from mill workers…… etc. The fact that the songs reflect the lives and experiences of the people who sang them as accurately as they do pretty well confirms this – for me anyway. The clincher is the fact that the folk repertoire is almost entirely anonymous and the product of many rather than single composers, therefore, if Bert Lloyd was right, too poor to be acknowleged.   
If further proof were necessary, run your finger down the lists of our source singers and note their occupations – Walter Pardon, carpenter from a farming background, Harry Cox, land labourer, Phil Tanner, mill worker and farm labourer, Margaret Barry, street singer, Jeannie Roberson, The Stewarts, Phoebe Smith, John Doherty, Duncan Williamson…… Travellers/tinsmiths/horse-dealers - small farmers, navvies, factory workers, building workers……... ie 'the people'
If our folk songs are not 'the people's songs' whose are they?
This assumes, of course, that we are talking about folk songs proper and not those which are passed off as such nowadays, which are completely different cans of worms!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: theleveller
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 07:20 AM

"This assumes, of course, that we are talking about folk songs proper and not those which are passed off as such nowadays, which are completely different cans of worms!!"

Jim, that's a rather enigmatic statement and I'm curious to know what you mean by a 'proper' folk song. Are you saying that there are no folk songs being written nowadays, or that people are writing songs and passing them off as traditional?

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 07:34 AM

"Are you saying that there are no folk songs being written nowadays"
hat's about itreally - folk is a process, not a style of writing.
'The people' in the sense I believe the the op means, no longer are pat of their cultre, just passive recipients of it.
One full time collector (35 years ago), in Ireland, wherethe tradiion as still much more apparent, if not thriving, put iperfectly whenhe described his work as "a race with th undertaker".
What we have now is a revival, so diffrent thn te groups who sing Elizabethn madrigals
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Music of the people..Don't make me laugh
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 07:35 AM

Sorry about the typing - keyboard problems.
Jim Caoll