 Hello everyone, I'm Melissa A. Webber, Curator of the Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, a unit of Tulane University Special Collections, or Tusk for short. We'd like to welcome you to our session archiving jazz fest hosted by Tusk and featuring Rachel Lyons, Archivist with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Archive. Today's event is presented as the closing event for the Tusk exhibition titled Music is the Scene Jazz Fest's first decade, 1970 to 1979, which features materials primarily from Tusk collections, most of which have not been widely seen or heard. The exhibition has been on view in the Tusk gallery since March 4 and will close in the gallery tomorrow at 4pm. 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 Tusk 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 unrenovated building into a vibrant research facility with numerous collections in 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 cancellation, 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 mic to you, Rachel. 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. 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. 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 Ween in 1970 that was the first year. And at that time, he met Quinn Davis and Allison Minor, 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 Frenchman 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 of course sister Gertrude Morgan, who's a very famous folk artist and she actually it's her artwork that is the cover of the very first program book. Okay, there we go. 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. You know, they really show how the footprint of the festival and how it continues to grow. Curtis and Davis, that's Quinn's father's architectural firm, who came in and helped and there are other drawings like this that are actually at the HNOC historic New Orleans collection in the Winston Lill. 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 of the festival. You know that took up most of the time and attention in the mid to late 70s like 7677 78 is when there 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. 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 backside 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 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 we jazz and heritage center. So George we, you know, gave us a lot of support throughout the years, and the building is named after him and his honor. It 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. There's 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 wwz is an asset. The heritage school music is an asset and also jazz fast. So we're the core activities that I guess the way to describe it as we are the ones that have the things. So beyond office programming. We're the ones that have all this physical material whether for me for collections and oz will have sound boards and other technology and of course recording trucks that are at jazz fast. We run programs under economic development. One of the first things we did when the pandemic hit was we gave out $1 million in funding across the state to musicians. And then we gave out another million dollars of our own money. We also partnered with like 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 were the financial partners at work. And the things we do and these are all the upcoming dates for our, our community, what we call the community festivals are all free. We do have people asking for donations 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. So other than that where 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 minor who was the festival founder was also the founder of this archive. She started 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 1000 interviews at that point. She passed away in 1995. So she's no longer with us she was in her 40s so she was quite young when she passed. So this is the archive the building was donated to the foundation by in hardcastle. It was the old Sony hardware building for any of your old school or many and out there. The space is quite small where 1000 square feet. You can see our shelving we're really at capacity we've had three different configurations of shelving. But the good news is is that there's always offsite storage. So this is what the building looks like when I got here. You can see the boxes were everywhere. It was sort of crumbling in another state. 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. 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 real to real tapes those are stored in Tennessee. And I pulled them back because we ended up getting money to digitize them after Katrina so that's still Loris and she's five feet tall so that'll give you an idea what 1300 real to real tapes look like. This is the Michael Murphy collection. 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 Murphy and then the other is jazz fast and the other half of it is other more music related materials. 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 testing in place or if you have the Smithsonian box set. So here is our Smithsonian box set 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've never done anything like this before but you just buckle up and you put your head down and you go. I have a lot of bankers with Ozzie is also a producer on this. His help was amazing. Carrie Buer who runs the Ozzie social media. She helped me a lot with the 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. I'm very proud and it got to number three on the billboard jazz charts. So, we mentioned the jazz testing in place so that is all happened, you know you can see those, but also recently we created this documentary with Michael Murphy and WIS which is our local public distribution station, and we just got news two days ago that it won a silver tele award so we're very excited. It is on a national pds distribution so 270 stations picked it up across the country. So we're super excited about having that. And of course, now if you 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. And the 2019 festival in IMAX. So there is a ton of amazing footage. So I'd say it's more more of a performance based of the festival, but it also has probably about 25% historical information in it. And I worked very closely with the producers and 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. 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. 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 US 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 do a series of institutional oral histories as well so we'll interview past presidents of the board and, you know, long time 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 Wiens Club Storyville that was in Boston for many years George was born and raised in Boston. Y'all know that. Anyway, so we, 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 and 70 and 71. And he really gave a very colorful detailed description of what it was like a to come down here from someplace north, and run the Royal Sinester Hotel, but also about, you know, it really starting in that he had almost like the pre work with them. And he found when he got here in 70, and he was asked by Lester Kavakoff, Pres Kavakoff'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 we're still living a kind of a mad men life style as his board members. These are people that he was inheriting from the 69 festival, which is not our festival because it was not operated as the foundation. So it was basically him and Daryl black, the one very useful guy on that board that really pushed and made the festival happen in 70 along with George. Yeah, so it was, it was a very interesting time. And just, it was the good old 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 lovely. He came down for the ribbon cutting and he and George got to talk and see each other is touching these two 95 year old guys. 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. 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 where we've gone full blown forward we're starting in digital archive. So a lot of my work is, I'm handling a lot, especially now with request to use the material so I do a lot of administrative stuff, and then I periodically dip into collections. Dolores 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 four 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 photo copies, 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 that we break up parts of it to get it moving forward. Yeah, so we're, we haven't instituted our volunteer program back quite yet. But I'm looking forward to getting that done either during the summer in the fall. 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. So audio and video is a big one, because 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, you know, and everything social media everything is so visually based that 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 6968 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 will 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 cuisine, because I have some very early prototypes of like the hard styrofoam, you know, with the ring and it has our logo on it. But we also have a lot of artwork. So the Hellas Foundation gave us, I think about $150,000 to buy artwork for the Ween Center. So, yeah, so we have everything even our beer cuisines are insured under a 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. So that's that falls under our purview. 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 have an online catalog. Only some of the things on there can actually be viewed so basically it's the Allison minor music heritage stage from 2012 forward. And of course all of this is dealing with copyright law and making sure we have the right to do it. And also, you know, we have to be respectful, because it's not just our relationship with the music community and the arts community and 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, that 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. Yeah, and then a lot of what we have, you know, 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 our catalog. We're pretty aggressive and very focused on the user and trying to make things as available as possible. Okay, so call me call me or email me is the answer if you have a question. Are there posters now online can't I mean not the posters the programs. Oh yes. So we did. 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, you know, 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 like last name search. So that's been really sweet. Yeah, and that's a very easy way of doing it and you can just download them. So we're very happy about that, getting resources to the people. I have just one more question and then I'm going, going to 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 of materials are not there for instance while I was creating the test exhibition. You shared info with me about the 1978 Coindu effort and I realized that we didn't have materials at Tusk to represent that story so thank you for giving us permission to display Coindu 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 Coindu with our audience because 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 going to 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 is a last minute cancellation we may not have known it from 1986 or something, but it is completely searchable of everybody who's ever performed a jazz fest we put in the canceled jazz fest to. So, just to make sure that we were going to have a complete record so the canceled jazz fester 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 Coindu. The, and we did curate an exhibit I, we have a couple of collaborators some cultural anthropologists that have studied jazz fast, and their names are Helen Regis she's at LSU and Shawna Walton she's at nickel 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 were 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 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 Colombo yes alarm was one of the leads with this group along with say coo fella and a handful of other people. So, they basically for in George ween actually writes about this in his New Orleans chapter in his book about going to the same Bernard project and having a meeting with them. But basically what came out of it was coin do 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 fairground so there had to be some kind of overlap and administration, but it was solely run by the African American jazz fest coalition or coin do group. Those, that organization fell apart. And it was primarily due because there was a difference on, you know, 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. At this point, eight years later you know 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, you know, noted writer from New Orleans, he was our executive director and Coloma yasala, they both ran the Congo Square writer circle, and they renamed the coin do area Congo Square, and it became more integrated into the festival itself at that point which was 1988. So, thank you. And also are there materials that you wish you had or could find. Um, from coin do. Oh for just related to just I remember asked about the logo that could be what the original logo prototype. Okay, well I mean a lot of that I found in my, I found out in my research along the way. I still, I still learn things though, every day. I mean, I just, I just always have to tip into something that I learned. You know, there was a big article for jazz fessing in place when I talked about finding the wolf gangs materials the recordings from the 1970 jazz fast. 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 go to archives conferences and there'd be other radio archivists there. And I'd say, Oh, you know, do you have any Pacifica radio, you know, do you have any radio for Europe, or, you know, so there are things that I know. Oh well 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 I can't remember what it was, but that was like three years ago. 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. Oh yes, I just want to say one thing. My 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 know, you all, you know, 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, I was talking to the guy at our during Jazz Fest and I mentioned some of what I learned in Dick Allen's papers. So doing the collect doing the research and finding out more about what is around us is has been so helpful and it has really like 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, I can't thank everybody enough in our archival community in New Orleans. Awesome. Okay, there's a lot of questions that we have about 20 minutes so let's start with the question from James, who is wondering if you could talk a bit about difference between archival handling of recordings and materials. For example, digitizing old real to real 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 experience vendors to do that digitization. So, I can answer just enough to be dangerous so I won't. But he can if he wants, can drop Joe our digital archivist and email. It's Jay Stelaric at jazz and heritage.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. So, and has worked for OZ for many years for anyone in the trucks at jazz fest but he's also a master's in library science he was basically designed by God for us. But Joe could probably help with that question, better than I will. Okay, next question what is your favorite item in the collection. So, I'll just talk about a general category. So, we collect the unofficial stuff. So, I, I love it when you see like community participation in jazz fest or in the foundation. So, for example, here at the crew to view parade, they parodied jazz fest, and it was some scathing you know they're there, they really do satire at the crew to view 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 contact went over contacted the people we interviewed them we found out who this gentleman was that died and how important it was. So, I think that it's reasonable 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 is TJ. 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. 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 best poster, the assigned copy of what year that 1976. Oh, yes we do collect, and I would love to see your poster. Think 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 in the chat. Yeah, it's always best if you take a look at our online catalog and what were what we have up. And from there just give us a call, or drop me any email, and that's sort of when we, because we're so small here, and you know 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 valued 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. I don't have a real application, but I usually start with an email and if you can either send me a resume, or if you're interested 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 going to like, and not ones that they're going to be bored with. 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 fast database that was 90% volunteers that built that for us, and we are forever grateful. 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. Because we've had so much demand since 2019 for use of the collection and 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. Those are our two big projects currently Dolores is here she's you know we buy artwork at jazz fast so we're, she's here working on physical collections that have come in because we have some new artwork and some other materials. George Wiens 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 going to, 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's basic processing, and then there's more detailed processing. So it's always a matter of nibbling away and making things more accessible. What kind of paper records do you have that the archive. 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 sooner. And it wasn't as well it was always a prize of the foundation. They did not take very good care of getting those records here so when sooner 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 flyers like things like that that are what we would call ephemera. And then of course digital, you know, because David Friedman the previous director of the general manager of oz, you know he came and gave us three laptops. So, you know, then we're processing those materials so that the paper 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. So, the founders of the festival which is basically George wean his company was festival productions incorporated. And at a certain point, I believe in 1998 festival productions New Orleans was established as quince company. So, from the very beginning, the foundation is contracted with FBI 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 FBI 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, 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 was 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, you know we get I don't know how many millions of dollars a few million dollars a year, all of our people in my 90s are online. So, through guide star if you guys want to see what foundation financials are, but we take that money and then reinvested into the community, either with the whole diversity of our programs. And you can see all of our programs online to we just did a big redo of our website and it's awesome. I posted a question for you in the chat she says question from left field has anyone from how I yeah ever consulted the archives to help design the jazz fest shirts. So, so that how are your shirts are developed by buddy Bremberg, who is also the person who makes the posters. It's art for now. 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 to 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 fast highlight or peak experience at fast. I'm assuming that doesn't necessarily have to involve archival work. Okay, so I'll give, I'll give two. One, I would have to say I think it was 2008 Richie Havens in the Blues 10. I literally thought the tent lifted up like six inches on his final, you know, version of freedom it was truly one of the most stunning things I've 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 use a 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 and 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 26. It was in the morning and it was like nobody out there yet so it was before the gates opened and I still had like $2 starter on my pinned self and these four Boy Scouts started just belting from 30 feet away happy birthday to me and it 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. Those are my two little favorite I think. You know and it talks about the spirit of the people there to both of them, you know in terms of the crowd and the audience and you know. And they were my performance my Boy Scouts. There are 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 and 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 never, 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 bootstraps you know you saw those pictures, 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. 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, I can't get bored here, because as I've often said, I don't need another piece of paper to come in the archive and I can continue for another 10 years. But there's always a chance to learn something new and do something new, and it tests my metal. 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 started 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. What was the other half, you had another. Oh, Gus, why is the jazz and heritage archive important in your words. Oh. 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 FBI that they've done such a great job creating an authentic experience about Louisiana, including, you know, we have a folk life village 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, I 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, 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 that's why this archive is important. 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 tusk and to the jazz and heritage archive and you can always reach Rachel, or me and our respective archives with all of your questions. Thank you so much for joining us today. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. Bye bye everybody.