Let's fight World War 3 over Lithuania, notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. The problem with anti-imperialists who spend all their time criticizing the evil US empire is that there aren't nearly enough of them. People who respond to criticisms of the US by babbling about the misdeeds of other governments are just saying you should never criticize the most powerful government in the world for any reason. Hey, I've got a great idea, let's start World War 3 over a NATO country that most Americans don't even know exists. Liberals learned the word Lithuania 10 seconds ago and they're already ready to nuke Moscow over it. If you're on the front lines risking your own life fighting and killing Russians for Ukraine, I will happily listen to your opinion on why there should be no negotiated settlement to end this war.  The worst thing about the George W. Bush administration is that it never ended. I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but here in Australia it's pretty easy to convince the average citizen that Assange shouldn't be extradited to the United States just by sharing a few facts. The only reason more don't is because the press spent so much time smearing him instead of telling the truth. It mostly comes down to the fact that the mainstream Western press spent so much time aggressively smearing Assange after the 2016 WikiLeaks drops about Hillary Clinton. That shaped public perception of this issue more than anything else. They were relentless and they were vile. That's why it doesn't make much difference when mainstream publications decry Assange's persecution after aggressively smearing him all those years.   It's a Guardian article titled The Only Barriers Who Assange Leaving Ecuador's Embassy is Pride. And then expect the public to just absorb editorials like this. This is another Guardian editorial. The charges against Assange should never have been brought. The decision ought to worry anyone who cares about journalism and democracy. People aren't simply going to accept that after you've spent years conditioning them to want Assange's head on a spike. If people know the facts about Assange's persecution, they'll overwhelmingly be supportive. If they just consumed mainstream news media between 2016 and 2019 without really drilling down and researching the Assange case, they'll tend to be unsupportive. This is the media's fault. Between 2016 and 2019, smearing Assange was a way of demonstrating to current and prospective mainstream media employers that you will do anything, anything at all, to defend the empire. It was a great way to advance your career, and many did so. If the press were actually working to create an informed populace as their job purports to be, there would be a tremendous amount of support for Assange. The reason that hasn't happened is because their real job is the exact opposite to manipulate, deceive, and propagandize. It's impossible to despise the mainstream Western press too much, in my opinion. They are paving the way to destruction and dystopia just as much as the plutocrats and politicians. They whine that the public hates them, but really the public doesn't hate them enough. The Trump administration was an educational time to observe how the populist right is easily manipulated into defending standard Republican actions like killing the Iran deal, assassinating Salimani, arresting Assange, starving Venezuelans, killing attempts to save Yemen, etc. Every single time Trump rolled out a foreign policy decision that would have looked perfectly at home in the Bush administration, I'd have MAGA people in my notifications explaining why his action was actually good and why it hurt the deep state. Literally every single time, without a single solitary exception.  The so-called populist sentiments on the American right are manipulated toward the agendas of oligarchy and empire in the exact same way the progressive sentiments on America's so-called left are. The whole thing is subject to very aggressive and very effective narrative control. It's a safe guideline that any movement which pushes people to align with either of America's two mainstream political parties is controlled from top to bottom. If their solution to America's problems at any time includes voting for Republicans or Democrats, they're not worth listening to. That's why when I see people championing obvious empire lackeys like Ron DeSantis as populist heroes and babbling about drag queens and trans people even as we're moving closer to the brink of nuclear war, I tend to be pretty dismissive of their entire movement. All you need to do to kill leftward movement is flood the information ecosystem with enough confusion about socialist and anti-imperialist issues that it becomes impossible to hold a lucid position on them without copious amounts of research. Few are willing and able to do this. It's easy to sit back and judge people for believing propaganda and failing to push for real change and adequate numbers. But if you look at the vast quantity of sophisticated psyops distorting everyone's picture of the world, it's very understandable that there's so much confusion. As long as only a small minority of people have the willingness and ability to put in long hours to try and understand what's going on, it will remain easy to manipulate all leftward movement into impotence or complicity. Something very, very big is going to have to change.


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Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I am honored to be joined by Mr William Leclerc of Ebonora Drums will welcome to the podcast. Thanks Bart. I'm very happy to be here today. It's a pleasure Yes, I have heard the name of Ebonora quite a bit in the past but more and more recently So I'm excited to get you on Because it's cool to see a a young ish brand growing in in the drum world So first off congrats for your success man. Your hard work is paying off. Thanks, man. It's absolutely. It's so much appreciate it Yes, it's a it's an honor to be here today to show the passion about the drums and give the the history of Ebonora Drums. It's yeah, I'm not Hold I started company at 21. So I'm 30 now. So it's a yeah, okay, yeah We're gonna we have beautiful experience on the drum building. Yes. So Yeah, very cool. That's yeah, I'm 33. So we're pretty close to the same age and it's It's it's very neat to see young people doing things and starting their own brand because it's it's daunting at first, but Before we start I want to give a quick mention to two people who have suggested you which is always a good sign when you're You're recommended twice by different people. So thank you to Brandon Green who you're in Canada I should mention that you're in Quebec or Quebec and and So is Brandon and he recommended you and actually the other guy Jay Kulkarni looking how to pronounce his name here Jay super nice guy emailed in and recommended you as well. So thank you to Brandon and Jay for suggesting you. I love I love when that happens. Thanks guys. Yeah, thanks. Yes. Absolutely. Um, so we'll Let's just hear it, man. So Ebonora drums Beautiful drums if people haven't seen them I recommend that they go to your website and follow along which I'll read off is ebonora percussion e b e n o r percussion com just in case you want to follow along but We'll take us back to the beginning man. How did this all start? Yeah. So ebonora drums. Yeah for sure Everything started at the passion. So I'm a drummer I I grew up on a farm from my parents and my parents had a business A little farm with horses and everything in a bnb experience. So I grew up there and the business thing came from there I learned a lot on the on the farm with from my parents the good and the bad things and at the age of 12 they decided to buy me a drum set so I literally it literally came a passion and I was playing the drums when I had the chance because there was always people had had the farm to to visit us and Be in the bnb. So I found some some place during the day to play the drums and um, my father is the uh, is a Really good manual skills man. So he he Taught me a lot of Beautiful skills and making a beautiful thing when I was young. So the passion of making some things or and the the passion of the music started at a young age and um I decided to go out in the mechanical engineering in Sherbrooke to study there. So Yes, I learned a lot making a lot of stuff metal process and everything so I can bring my drums with me in the my studies and I Continue to practice and play and with some people there. So What I during my studies? I decided to to focus more on drum building I did so much research on the on the website and youtube and everything to learn about drum building So the passion of building drums started there a lot uh with my good friends, Anthony and the Yeah, me and I he and and I were were always on uh looking at drums Where as gc true drums and looking how how people were making the drums and looks on the video on youtube and everything So we we we do we did some um a trip to uh To see our good friends precision precision drums So yeah, it was fun to to To make the passion about drum this thing grew there Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting that you're you're saying like uh sjc and truth and you look at these brands because that was very I mean we grew up around the same time of that was that like 2010s kind of like Explosion of those boutique brands Which I think Kind of paved the way for not to say I mean sjc is like one of the biggest drum builders in the world They're they make amazing stuff so to a lot of those boutique brands But it's almost like it paved the way for like there's now like a next tier of builders Who are more like you and like a and f and these brands that are a little bit more like Yeah, artisanal and raw and real as opposed to like crazy over the top Yeah, that that's the same. Yeah, that's that's the thing because making custom drums was more Like the sgc thing the truth custom drums and everything do to Take a good drum shell make the beautiful finish and put parts on it and Makes drums that you want to have a look a sound and make all custom and That's that that's a there's a lot of adapting the A couple years ago. So yeah my studies and after that Um Yeah, I decided to to to do a little Study in the business And after that I did some some research For a place here in kubek if there's not another place where I can Work in that Drum building thing. So I discovered that aya drums was was in kubek at that time They were mainly originally from vancouver like a lot of people know but in 2012 I think yeah, they were in kubek and I decided to to send my An email there to that I wanted what to work with them and I get a job and started to work with them But I will not do the whole story of aya drum because there's a lot to say But I worked there and I worked with I had the chance to work with Not not a lot of people know that but I work with aya a Ray aya Yeah I had the chance to work with them But I have so much respect for the owners and where they are at the moments Where the what I have studied there, but Yeah, and the thing is that with hebron drums. I wanted to make some something completely different from That kind of drums. So Yeah, after after that, I decided to start hebron or when I was 21 years old in 2014 September 2014 So in this this september It would be our 10th anniversary already. So it's a wow. Congratulations. That's huge. Thanks. 10 years man. That's awesome Yeah, so um So, uh, yeah, that's where The the company the name ebb and ore came to me because all that passion for drums that passion of Drum building and the business side Uh, I know the good and the bad about business and I always want to to make my own business And it was at that age that I decided to to start ebb and ore. So um, yeah Well, what does what does ebb and ore does that mean something in particular? Yeah that's a good question to To and a good thing to mention because there's a lot of people want to have to know that so I took uh, when I was doing the The brainstorming about the name I came with two words. So I took in french. We call uh woodworking Uh, ebb and is theory. So I took the first part of the word ebb and is theory the ebb and The other word is uh sonor. So I took the end of sonor And put it just two word together and it came with ebb and ore Okay, so you start the brand you're 21 years old, which I mean, yeah, and no nothing. That's pretty wild man That's you're very young to do that. No money No place to build drums. So I I grew the company step by step that that was the main Uh The the main thing with me it's always step by step so the first step was to sell my pdp drum set at that time and make and make some cash uh to uh to give a cash down to To um to borrow some money at the bank and buy some tools to uh to work with the wood so um, yeah, um I decided to to start the company Um making my own drum shell That was the the main thing that I want when I just started to start ebb and ore to have my own sound identity So it's I decided to to buy some tools and I was a mechanical engineer So it was not new for me to To work with tools and everything that what is was new. It was to work with wood uh, I hadn't Not a lot of knowledge about wood, but Had a lot of friends who work with wood and did who did some studies in woodworking and everything. So, um I took a lot of people in my project to to start my our own process to make our uh drum shed that are made with the Stave technique so stave method All blocks and everything. So we work only with uh, north american wood mainly from kubek maple cherry walnut so Yeah, that's where we we started the company and uh, it built our Beautiful base for us to to have our sound nor good in our drum shell. So Yeah, which I mean that I think as as listeners of this show people usually know that that not every brand makes their shells Absolutely nothing wrong with a brand not making their own shells. No, because yeah, if you do wow Yeah, it's it's it's I have so much respect about all the uh, the other brands like I said I mentioned I can I think about SGC. I think about so much brands in the u.s Here in kubek. We had some beautiful drum brands too But I wanted to make to have it. It is more about the control quality control the Supplying chain control to make our own thing and I will probably mention later But it's the same with the hardware hardware today because we make or or logs or hoop Or photon brackets and everything in house at now. So but I would talk about this maybe later So it's more about supplying chain and everything and um so Yeah, but yeah, so much respect about the killer And other brands who use some some of that those shells This week's episode is brought to you by my friend, mr. Jeff Burke and the rogers drums usa facebook group Jeff has built an unbelievable community around the love of vintage rogers drums I can tell you from many firsthand experiences with jeff that he is the real deal and is extremely authentic and just a super nice guy And that comes through across all of the rogers drums usa group The group is all about friendship and mixing younger generations and older generations of rogers enthusiast together To get everyone in the same spot jeff is a proud rogers collector with an enormous collection And he's also working as a consultant for the new rogers drums and is doing a great job with that Rogers drums usa is all about spreading the message of rogers legends joe thompson and ben strauss and keeping the history of rogers alive So find them on facebook at rogers drums usa Just type that in and you'll find it and be sure to join jeff on the enormous big comfy couch that is always at the drum shows when rogers Usa is there and you can sit down hang out with jeff take a load off I certainly did recently at the chicago show and had an absolute blast hanging out at their booth I'm getting to relax for a little bit. So be sure to find them at the the drum shows and say hello and tell them You heard them Heard this ad on drum history and just say hi to jeff. So thank you to jeff and the rogers drums usa group for sponsoring this episode So you started building wooden drums first. Did you start with just snares or did you build a kit or did you go? How did the first? Yeah, first first order in 2000 woman 2014 was a cherry wood snare drum 14 by 7. I remember there was a guy here in Near a lake megan tic So, uh, yeah, cherry wood snare drums We we were only man work with wood at that time metal drums came after in 2017 But it was a snare drums and the ordered right after was a beautiful black walnut kit Uh from a good frame. So yeah, it's it was many I was working only with north american wood like I was saying and it's uh, I was using a lot of oil finish Using a generic parts uh triple flange hoops logs and everything so the yeah, so it's a pretty pretty fun Start with the company when people wanted to to buy your drums and I I went step by steps So the the first steps to make to spread the brands more here in kubek was to uh to get ambassador, so uh, thanks so much for my ambassadors here in kubek olivier leuc Dominique genatin steve. They are so uh So helpful for to spread the brands here in kubek and on social media. So yeah, yeah a lot of ambassador here well, I think that like Uh, josh allen from indie drum was talking about this a couple episodes ago about like you can do marketing You can buy ads you can do all this stuff, but like Really the best thing and it's slow at first is just create quality drums And word will spread and our community will will will talk about things And I find it more and more that you see like a drum shop post videos of you That's the best kind of marketing a forum people are posting and talking about you your snares Can't beat that. Yeah, the organic thing Uh, it's the best to to to spread the brands in the drum drummers community for sure Yeah, um Like I was on the road a lot a lot when I started company I was in some little drum show here in kubek the international drum festival in kubek from routh angelo uh, I was uh a lot in the The the show with uh drummers I was in kubek montreal. I was in montreal every month. So I was I was doing three hour drive every month To go to montreal meets drummer Uh at some studio and Showcase my drums the uber nor drums So yeah, it's a it's it was a lot of work the first five years of uh of business uh to to develop the brands and Literally try to survive, but now we are at a different step and it's uh, I structured the The business so much differently. So I learned a lot during those first five years. It's uh Yeah, it's a a good challenge for uh people people want to to To to uh to launch a brand or something. It's uh, yeah, but it's so fun to so fun to do It is fun to do and I I think there's like a big thing in like the drum world or the business world where people talk a lot about how Failure is so important not to say that you failed or whatever But you learn from these failures, but I think it's also important to say that Failure sucks and it's really miserable in the moment and it's not pleasant And you that's what you need to get through of like because people really praise like you you really do only learn from your Mistakes that you make I did a lot and that's how you grow But it's not it's not fun at the at the time when there's when there's things that are uh, it's a tough road Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I didn't I learned a lot about my mistakes and drum building On the business side. So but there they are always there to To you grew up when you you do mistakes. So I always do Mistakes, but I learned a lot about them. So for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well on the note of like successes Let's talk the first five years or I mean even with the podcast I have like moments where people ask the question of like What is something that's like there? What was like, uh, you went from here to here moment and for me it was Mike Johnston sharing it My show on the modern drummer podcast. It was like that's a notable mark of like that worked out well What about you?  It's the uh in 20 Yeah 2020 a big moment was the when Todd Zuckerman Decided to buy snare drums from from us But I decided to to get contact with him and he isn't is it is it so a gentleman? And yeah, yeah, he decided to buy the Narendra copper snare drums and he was So gentle to to do some video for us about the Narendra copper so It really turns out another game for the international sales and everything's it give him so much credibility when Todd the show show his drum on The snare drums of the week on drum hero. So yeah, yeah, he's a gentleman that is Yeah, thanks Todd for what what you did. It's so appreciate. Yeah, perfect example That's exactly what it is. But but you earned it. You didn't solicit and go out and say do this do this Which there's nothing wrong with that either but that's cool, man. That's awesome. It came naturally. Yeah, for sure But another thing and another game changer in the ebonore history is the in 2019 we I just I had to to do a move because When I was I had to a shop the first shop was in Saint-Romain. So the little village Here in Quebec. It was the a garage from my broader and he decided to sell the the garage for another project and I had to find another Building to make the drums so had to to search for for not a little building and I found one here in Saint-Sébastien just near 10 minutes away from Saint-Romain And that's where we are. It's a 4,000 square feet building. So where we It's really changed everything the the all the process to build a drum is so much easier now It's some more functional We so I above the building My house is in the building, but it's complete completely There's no communication from my house inside To the shops how I have to go outside to you go to the shop. It's uh, I learned Before because I was living in my shop In the first shop in Saint-Romain. So my Apartment was directly in the shop. The toilet was in the shop So I was always too close too close that was too close So I learned about that and I decided to split everything when I I above the second building so But it changed it changed everything buying that That that buildings and during that time my father too decided to come Join the my my um my team but not my team but join me because we are a team now We are two in the shop And I have two another employee here. Emil who worked with me with the um the parks He made a lot of parts but my father Decided to join me to in the in the business business has the master builder of The drum building parts and everything. So he's a really nice artisan. So My father who showed me a lot when I was young decided to join and It was so easy to uh to communicate with him to show him how I was making the drum So is my uh is I appreciate so much to work with him because He works like me. So I have so yeah, he's have so much trust in him to uh to make the drums And develop the process more and more and more so to make definitely easier faster And to to have all the quality in our drums too. So Yeah, he must be very proud. Yeah, he must be very proud of you to like you've started this you've you've stuck with it You created a business and you said Kind of like he's working like the way you work But you learned probably how to do a lot of stuff from him. So you guys probably have this When your family you have this like unspoken Kind of connection. Yeah, that's right. We have we have that that connection and Like I said the unspoken language because now he's working and you know what to do how to do it and What what is on the table now and what is the priority is that and the prior second priority is this so Yes, we do meeting meeting every week to to make sure everything Uh, uh, is progress progressing goods, but I have a lot of stress and I know he's proud to to work with me because it's We will work together every day and we share so much we share so much together And I am proud to to to work with him. It's a beautiful relation that we had so That leads to the next question of uh, so we're up till with your your history I mean, we're up to today things seem like they're going great. I mean Are are the drums you're building now? I'm looking on your website and they're you've clearly got it down. They're beautiful Are are they made to order or how does that work? Do you do you make them for a shop on? Yeah, what's that process? So it's all the way it was always made to order we sometimes we have in stock drums in stock snare drums or at The moment I don't have drums in stock. I just sold it Last week so but I I always have one kit maybe two three snare drums in stock But it's always two orders. So at the moment we have I think 12 drum kits to make uh, but the things uh in 2020 when the pandemic happened another Things that change everything was the supply in chain so when the pandemic arrived I was about to uh To buy some equipment or not equipment, but to I was about to throw some money uh to a company in in taiwan to make our own uh Signature hardware, but it was when the pandemic arrived at I was Seeing to myself. No, no. No, I don't have to do this. I would keep my money here And I decided to buy some equipment. So uh a product production late Uh some tooling to make all the hardware here in the house in the shop So that changed everything for us all the looks the signature visual signature on our drums So we make all the logs all the that are made from um Brass solid brass Wow, I have for the guys who listen. I have one here. So that's a yeah a brass log that we we make on our late beautiful and uh, I have a here should be here. I have here um a beautiful bronze hoops So we make all the bronze zoom the logs and the brackets um in the shop the bronze hoops are a silver weld. So my My father decided to to became a uh a real I think it's a jewelry jewelry Um, oh the jewel like jewelry. Yes. That's right. So jewelry used used a lot of silver to weld parts So my father decided to develop all that process here in the shop So to make beautiful, uh bronze hoops on our Drums so out of town and the the snare drums have that was a bronze hoops We I'm very very proud of that because it's a it changed everything on the Supplying chain because when during the covet was so difficult to have parts. Oh my gosh, it was so difficult Wild man. I can't believe that that's more respect than ever because of again, there's nothing wrong with using like like Uh a supplier for parts, whatever absolutely great I have suppliers and I had a lot of supplier for drum parts and still have because I'm not making the tension rod. I'm not making the the claws And it's only that but I have to buy the these parts too. So uh the heads and everything but Yeah, it's yeah, but it's it's it changed everything everything because We we can I can have 12 drum kits at the moment and I have everything to make them those kits here in my shop I just have to transform The brass on different equipment and that's what makes our I think our drums unique In terms of sound and looks and uh, yeah So it's yeah, it changed everything when we we I decided to jump into that it was not easy to To make happen because it takes money it takes a lot of passions because you don't have the exact Final project when you you start so it takes a lot of passions to make those those drum parts Sure, uh, but I'm looking on your website here You have there's a cherry wood drum set with smoke burst finish heavy feather collection Which we got to talk about those and then there's black walnut I mean just so everyone knows these drum sets are like $3,200 which That's extremely fair for a I mean these are hand built drums. So they're not Crazy priced. I mean, they're a professional high level drum set Which is very common with that price, but knowing that you're making every single thing on there That's about that's a pretty good price man. That's that's very fair Yeah, and I I know how to to make drums parts and everything but the When you have to make money you have to make money to buy tools to to you have to make money to buy More to live. Yeah to live and everything to reinvest in your business, but when you you want to To save it's always a time. So I I wanted to I know what when I wanted to do and the way to do it is was to to save sometimes to Make the final projects and to conserve the quality of the product for sure. So yeah Let's talk about working with aluminum the Heavy feather collection because I keep seeing that online. I keep seeing Your snare drums in particular kits. Yes, but we all know that snare drums are like more attainable There's something that someone can just buy and throw on their kit Without fully committing to a drum set and man, they sound great from everything I've heard online Thanks, thanks a lot What's it like? I mean the way you work with the metal and the finish and everything is just amazing So everything starts with a request from from customer nick So A shout out to nick who who wanted to have copper snare drums And in 2000 I think 2017. Yeah and So it came to me with that request and I was okay, man. I have to I wanted to create a collection. So that's where our collection came with the norenda copper collection So, uh, it's a copper shell That is the cold rulled antique welded Here we do a beautiful patina finish Outside and inside of the shell it took approximately Uh 8 to 12 hours to make all that beautiful crazy patina For those who want to see it you go you can go on our instagram or on our website to see that That finish. Yeah, and what it's awesome. Yeah, what it it is funds with that finish is that it is unique every time so the patterns are always difference the colors and everything so it's a beautiful drums and Um Yeah, that's there's a lot of interest about the the drum drummers community in that product Uh, we saw a lot of hearing a lot here in kubek I have some in the uk in the in the united states australia to have some some nice customer around around the world. So The copper was the the first uh metal that Where I decided to work with for snare drums but like you like you probably know drummers are Wanted to know If you can make a snare you probably can make a drum kit. So I had a real request to make a drum kit. So I had to make one for A customer and so but they are really expensive I think I don't have the uh norenda copper drum set on my website because it's it's just to uh Yeah, it's it's a long process to make but Maybe in the next month. I will put one on my website more for the yeah for people to order it So it would be a whole kit in that wild patina finish them. Yes. I may I may I think three or four kits like that They are really expensive because copper is so much expensive Yeah, but um, yeah a whole kit with that crazy pattern patina finish. Yeah And so you've got your aluminum heavy feather collection. Yeah, the the aluminum is uh, another funny material to work with I I think I my personal kit Was because it's I just recently sell it but I had want it was a aluminum kit so Aluminum is fun to work with have completely different sound from copper um For those who don't know copper is more warm. You will have more resonant sound into copper But you will get that sharp attack a beautiful definition so Into aluminum and copper, but aluminum is more drier. It's a drier sound Yeah Like an acrylite that but yours are much more. That's right like an acrylite or Yeah lm 402 Yes, it is more isn't it made with aluminum But I decided to make the heavy feather collection with aluminum because I'm a fan of a of logic ludwig drums Especially with that jambonum snare drums the lm 402 snare drums And that that that is that snare drums who inspired me to make that heavy feather collection because I wanted to have heavy sound But you you it is light material so you get you get the lightness with that but It is so much heavy, especially when you do a 24 inches kick bass drum It's so heavy you get that big power sound with beautiful sharp attack and People who wants to have that a lot of attack in their sound Aluminum is the best to use. I I know That a birch or are you other woods can give that attack But aluminum is fun when you have to something different In terms of sound but to have that attack and powerful into and drums. It's it's fun to do for what? Punk drummers metal drummers love that those drum kits a lot, but I have some drummers have one here in Quebec small Um is using his heavy feather for a pop gig because he's not a heavy player. He don't play drums Hard but He you know, so we don't have to play hard to have a lot of Output from the the drums. So it's he really appreciate that of those drums So the range of dynamics it's it is funds to to play Do you do something? Looking at them like they all seem to have like a bit of a patina to those as well So we do another oxidation process on the aluminum It takes shorter times to do on that, but it's always unique. It is more a smoky or Yes, that's a good way to put it smoky finish on it. It's fun to If you don't have to if you don't have if you don't want to have too much colors in the finish The patina finish and I'm in this font For that because it's more Yeah smoky finish. I would say you can look at them on the on our website too but Yes, it's always unique all At the same times we we can we don't control it. We don't we don't control the How it will happen it depends of the humidity in the hair The the temperature of the solution that we put into it But it's always it's fun to use that Something you don't have control to it and you put it in there and modern nature do what she wanted to do and That's absolutely These are really really cool and and the one thing and maybe you can answer this of like How does one builder let's say using aluminum or aluminium who would depending on where you're from Like how does how do you differentiate using metal drums? Like what's your special Thing with making these drums as opposed to a different aluminum snare versus a different brass snare How can people because wood there's different styles, but how do you make these special for ebonorm? Yeah, that that's a nice question because in a snare drums or drums there's so much Element in a drums that will influence the sound First the material that you use the thickness the edges the the depth The diameter all the various elements will influence the sound the head the drummer and everything so What makes our drum special is What I decided to do is to use A thickness so the copper is 116 of an inch thick And we do a 45 Angle on the On the sharp end of the shell And it's the same with the aluminum, but it's a little bit thicker For the aluminum so there's not a bit of shell like the acrylite or other Metal snares from example Ludwig who have those beaded shell and edges and the gauge of the Sheet of a copper or aluminum is a thinner So I went thicker for a shell, but I don't have to do those Beaded things so you will have a different sound When you do those beaded thing into the the shell it make a shell a bit stronger, but the The fundamental pitch go upper so all those elements will influence the sounds so Yeah, and I think what makes our drums unique is for sure. It's all that but it's the finishes and when you see it on the On the web but in person for sure all the hardware that we put on it So we we have just to mention we have the Our brass lugs and bronze so the ebonore signature hardware. We have it in the black finishes We have it in the antique brass finish like the this one like the hoops that I've show earlier So it's a beautiful antique finish that we do On the hardware and we have the the brush finish on the brass Another thing that we can mention to the Metal Ebonore drums, it's the My new my new collection Of drums. It's the antique brass So the snare that is very popular at the moment. I have a very cool drummer. It looks like wood. I mean it's beautiful Yeah, yeah, it's a beautiful raw finish antique so it's we we put it into some a bat of Something that we used to do that oxidation on the brass and get that brownish Finish on the shell. So it's really cool. We have some A lot of drummer that use it and why why I decided to do that collections and it was I think yeah, it was two years ago. Yeah, two years ago. I was reading the books of the of Dave Grohl The storyteller. I think it's that so yeah, and sure When I was reading that book I decided to to play a lot of nirvana song and all that stuff and And when I was hitting that a snare a snare drums, I was making the them The brass shell at that moment the antique brass collection and I was playing a lot of smell-like-teens period and That kind of yeah, what's the classic nirvana? Yeah, a classic nirvana the uh The other song who we you do you do a lot of flam and a lot of rim shots. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was okay. That's I need to do a collection with that kind of brass shell so brass is beautiful material to work with it's so fun to work with brass It's not easy to weld You have to to to develop a good process To the to weld that to have a good temperature and everything So it's a little difficult to to weld but once you have it it go pretty pretty easy So, uh, yeah, I haven't sterling I haven't sterling in the u.s. Have one Uh Of that, uh, cool collection the antique brass Um, I had my good friend paid in hillard to uh in the nashville, tennessee who have one there's a couple drummer here in kubek Some in in the uh in the uk also So, uh, yes, it's it's a fun. That's a fun snare drums to to work with because you you can go With Brass can do and everything so when you have a go-to snares to use is uh, you go with with uh with that brass Yeah, that's good to know. It's a good suggestion. They're not the cheapest snares in the world Any brass snare is known as just there. They're a more expensive material, but It sounds like you can use them for everything. So that's that's a great suggestion. Um, I want to talk a little bit about, uh, the community which we all love the community We're a big part of it, but on your website I see there's a community tab where it talks about a cool experience you do is this still happening It was just before covet or what's the what's the story with the ebb and ore community Yeah, yeah, that was before covet. Uh, maybe maybe next year I will do some things for the 10 anniversary of ebb and ore because uh every every year before covet I was doing the Open doors haven't at the shop. So A lot of drama from Montreal, Quebec, Gaspisia or around Quebec, maybe Ontario I have some from the US from Vermont Maine come to the the shop and hang here in the shop and try the new collection and drink beer and all that stuff And just just hang and and share and that's so much important in the community is to share about your gear Even if it's not a bit or I am a gear free to have an album. Cool. Yeah. I have a key drums I have so just to share about drum gear with the other drummers is so fun to do so Yeah, it's it was a nice evidence to to put drummers together Here and share about drums and discover new products that I have to so Yeah, I mean, it's been said before I'll say it again. We have a very special community That is different than uh, I mean not that I really know I'm not in the guitar community But I know that our drum community of brothers and sisters of in the drums are it's very special You know our bond it's uh There's so much so much respect Here in Quebec for sure about yeah what The no matter about what gear you have no matter about where you are at that drums. It's there's a respect that is so you can feel it when you share about drums and I yeah, it's it's fun to to to put drummers together and see what happened after that It's like they're speaking everything and about bearing edges. What's your type of wood and everything? so That's a kind that's a part of my job that I had that I love a lot to share about what I do So it's always a pleasure to to have a call from drummers to explain How how I do drum because when when someone come come here to order drums Or a maybe a custom size of drums or some things I always take times to to ask a question About what he wanted to do with with drums what he what he's looking for It's so important to to know what he wants and guide him to To some things that he will endure. So it's important for me to do that and share It's great. And you know, it's just it's also neat to hear about the community I mean, I'm in the you know, united states and to hear about this happening up in canada where it's like A different community and and you I mean where where you are is mainly like french speaking. Yeah, french speaking Yes, that's the main language that we have here. But which is very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but it's We we we speak french, but all the drums word are all in english. So bearing edges All that stuff or that's interesting. Yeah to hear a string of french words and then bearing edges and then Yeah, but that's cool though I like to hear about and and I'm thinking of asba drums, which is french french, you know over there But to hear about these these You know parts of the world and and here in you know, our north american and the continent that's cool to hear about this But you just you it's nice to hear about these different communities and drummers and things like that But it's kind of universal Our love of drums does not it there's no language barrier. It crosses borders Yeah, it is it is and we we have them A special drum festival here in kubek the ralph and jillio drum festival That I think it was the last one Last year But I think it was it is 20 25 years anniversary But ralph the the owner of the field stable did that kind of festivals Since so much years and you wanted to put all the drummers together and uh It brings a lot of professional drummer thomas lang Steve smith all that big names at the festival to to do some clinics and it's it was nice to have that kind of community here in kubek but Yeah, something cool that I can mention to is that that community or drum partnership is We can feel it also in canada too because We have drumio Thanks to to jared And how the guy's there It's so fun to to to share with them Yeah, we were featured on drumio. Yeah. Yeah was featured which that's a bump. You know what I mean? That's a that's a That's a nice bump. Yes. Yes jared. I mean jared for the first time. I think at the ralph festival international festival I think two or three few four years ago And he said man if I if you need Help for something. Let me know we'll arrange something. So I think it's two years ago. I I've sent him An aranda copper snare drums to review with The guys there brandon and the Um Dave that's right. So you can find that video on drumio I don't know what was the the name of the episode but They did a did a review and Mention us and yeah, it's it's a funny video to look You look at I think the asba drums was there to to to be reviewed. There's a beautiful community I have a good friend in canada My good friend brian cymbalock. He had the The store we got the beat. So that's the name of the store Is a good friend. He he have it's like a dealer for from ebonore dealer here in canada Yeah, so he will have our new collection the the antique brass But in full kit version so he will have it so for those who I think there's there's some people watch that video. You can see the the kit of the Uh of brian riding near me. So it's uh, it could be a beautiful antique brass kit. So uh full brass shell kit Yeah, well, I gotta ask you speaking of full kits. I'm on your website under the our work section and pretty quickly you scroll down and there is a Giant drum set that is an ebonore drum set That has octobons. It's got a gong bass drum.  Yeah, yeah, sorry for laughing because it's oh no, it's it was a crazy project to make so You can see a big a big big rack So it's a gibral gibraltar rack So I did all the uh the racks myself. So I took all the parts order and the The the parts who was so difficult to do is is to hoarder those parts from my Distributor here in gibraltar. I wait so much long about all those snare snare stands all those Tom suspension and everything so sure. So that's uh, I think there's 25 Uh piece of drums. So bass drums. There's tim ballies tim ballies. So Okay, it's a 6 8 10 12 13 14 15 16 18 Tom's two bass drums 222 bass drums. So Uh, there's a neren the copper snare drums 14 by 6 in the five and a half there was uh bird's-eyes maple Snare drums because that kit is all made of bird's-eyes maple So all the octabands all the tom's the bass drums are made from from solid bird-eyes maple Wow, and it's all stave. Is it all staves? So the octabands you can see The octabands are stave. So the I think there was uh 24 inches long octaban Hey So this is crazy. It's a big kit. So there was four two bands two tim ballies and a gong drum plus a second Yeah, like you mentioned a second, uh line of eight 10 12 treating tom's upper Man, that's a crazy like for for people who are listening and not watching.  I mean it's it is it's awesome. You have you have drums All around you so it's uh, it's uh, you like terribos you kits, but yes only two Was this for a famous drummer or was this just for someone who's a big enthusiast, uh, a big enthusiast and passion drummer Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Well, congrats to them. Yeah, yeah When he came to me with that project, I was man, you're not serious. It's not it's not a serious project It's do you have money for that? Is it is it is it? I wasn't gonna be at the be the I wasn't gonna ask and be rude But holy cow, this has got to be an expensive drum. It is it is really expensive because the rack all the rack the tubes the the brackets the uh costs a lot so but I think the kits took me but I did I give him to my customer. I give him I think Seven months to build that kit. So we we build that kit And other kits for sure We had four or five kits at the same times. We took seven months to to order the parts and build everything So it's a high gloss finish to uh chrome black chrome Hardware triple flinch hoops uh Yeah, it's uh the guy said, okay, let's go. I have money and let's make I have he said I want to have all the drums you can make all the sizes. Oh man It's a showpiece for you. It's a it's a it's a display for your website It's an absolute you're scrolling and you stop and go. Whoa. What's that? That is yeah, it is amazing. What is that? That's exactly right. Every time I put every time I put that kit on instagram. I get like thousand thousand likes Yeah, which is good. Can't do it too much, but it's nice to share like once a year or something Yeah, um as we get close to the end here. I mean you you've learned a lot Is there any tips or tricks that you would give to people who are interested in Getting into the world of drum building you're 10 years in What's your like biggest, you know, I wish I knew this at the beginning kind of stuff Yeah for like I'm not I'm not like Yeah, I learned a lot about drum buildings, but I have a lot to learn too I'm always learning so for someone who wants to to learn more about drum buildings just Try try to do some things like to To tune your drums. If you don't try to tune it Nobody will do it. So just just try to make some drums if I started to make drums with Refurbishing projects so all the rats the bearing edges on whole all the rays are singling So and when I started the company too, I was offering a refurbishing Um services, but I don't do it because I have now because I Uh, I don't do it anymore because I have too much. I don't know drums to do But uh for someone who wants to to know about more drum building is to look at their drums and just dive in to the drums to to Put down all the other areas on your drums and everything and to just to play with the your drums And modify some things or do bearing just a good way to start drum building in the interest it's put hands and I haven't I I learned a lot On my day-to-day job here In my shop to to try something but I learned a lot to to listen to videos or to share with other A drum builder because it's it's they are all drummers. So it's uh, there's a nice drum builder community out there All around the world. So it's it's fun to share with drum builders. It's uh, We don't have nothing to There's no secret. It's if you want to to find something on the internet now you will find it. So it's It's for me. I always want to share about my works with other builders or give give them some something Try or a way to to start so to look at something Yeah, absolutely. And nowadays it's it's I don't want to say tough It's it's a good thing and it's tough because you have to be your own You have to do all your marketing too. You have to do the social media. You have to do youtube You have to do all that stuff which is very important. But the thing is that That's the thing that I love of my job is because I always do something different. I don't I don't do Always, okay, make the same logs Five days away. It's okay. I do some logs. Okay. I have to to give some calls to do it to customer Or I have to order some parts. Oh Wait, I have to finish some today. I have to to to go to the paint shop so it's it's fun to to do always stuff That are different like that and uh, yes, it's uh It's it's a beautiful job and it's The thing is I think that the hardest hardest parts is the business side because when you You drum building it's for me. It's the easiest Parts the business it's it's all it's difficult because you have to deal with Problems you have to deal with cancellation. You have to deals with back orders Yeah taxes and taxes and everything but it's not it's funny because I start every year stealing myself. I want to have fun Doing drums and manage the business and it's sometimes tough, but I wanted to have a fun A fun job. So it's and I work with my father every day. We had So some days we we don't exchange. We don't talk together But it's because we know we have what we have to do But it's it's always fun to to share and develop a new machine Here in the shop. We we have some beautiful Uh non-conventional machines to make drums. So we we build our own tooling here All the the machine to to drill holes into the drums Some machine to for the finishing process So we build our own machine In the shop, that's awesome That's very cool. That's like what you're paying for when you buy your drums Is this one of a kind kind of proprietary stuff where In the end they're all round drums that we hit and play for fun But but the process and the story and all that I think people Yes, really enjoy. Yes, and When you you buy a ebonore drum, it's like you yes, you buy the what you see Maybe on the website or you see but when you we we exchange or when you Drummer come to the shop. You see What we how we build our drums We may we make our lugs every single lugs one at the time. So You see that. Okay. It's it's handmade from from scratch. So it's it's not only from generic but generic stuff are good because It's always a question of time But I decided decided to that we had enough time to make our drums parts and everything so it's It's a plus value to the customer by draw ebonore drums and it's it's an experience So it's it's not just a drums. It's an experience that the people For sure very well put Is there anything we can look forward to from ebonore that you're like really excited to be producing soon You've talked about some stuff along the way, but like yeah next big things that you're working on Yeah, yeah, we have a so next big thing for for us. It's the The uh, we we will be at the uk drums show This year's in september end of september. So I will not be there, but uh, my ambassador in the uk so anthony johns and matt par These are my two ambassador in the uk will be at the show to showcase some of ebonore drums The heavy feather kit and all the snare drums that we have nice and some things new that is That i'm cooking in the moment. It will be a another snare collection, but not for now I will not say any more about that but not for now because we focus more on the antique brass snare drums and kit we we don't have Show a lot of kit on social media So we have a beautiful recording That was made by my good friend celestine here in cobec about the antique brass snare drums We have also Another partnership here in cobec is the dramatec My friend micho is a is a teacher. So he's teaching to a student with ebonore drums and he's also it's a showroom In the city here in centaisent We can't showcase ebonore drums to people who would like to see it. So That's another that's great that we have at the moment. So that we are proud. Yeah Yeah Well, you're smart. You're you're moving fast, but you're not moving too fast and you're not taking on Yeah, it's staying in action is the key. So yeah, yeah, that's true man. That's great Uh, so i'm looking at you you guys have a youtube channel that i'll put in the link in the description You want to tell people your website and your social media and all that stuff and yeah So for people who would like to to see uh to see us, uh, we we put a lot of uh photo video on instagram So it's ebonore percussion on instagram. We have uh The facebook ebonore percussion or the website ebonore percussion dot com Uh, that's that's the main uh the three main, uh channel that we have We have also our youtube if you wanted to listen Uh about some uh record and you just have to Recording you just have to put to type ebonore on youtube. So you would have everything Yep, perfect kind of smart because ebonore if you search it you find you guys There's not many different like some some things if you search you find a thousand things It's always just ebonore. So that was that was smart. Um So uh real quick before we end i want to thank brandon green and uh j kulkarni again for The recommendation because you are you've represented your brand very well today on the on the show and and you're like Yes, the show is drum history, but you're like modern drum history I mean 10 years in and you're already you've done a lot in that that amount of time So you should uh be very proud and thanks represented your brand. Well and thanks to you Bart I really appreciate the opportunity about the to make the drum history podcast I'm a big fan of the podcast. I think I have listened about of the all the episode About drumming for sure, but uh the nilpert series, but thanks for the making all that for the community It's so much. I appreciate My pleasure and and on that note just while we're talking i'll tell people i'm gonna try and do more of those gear episodes Uh paul wells is coming back on we're gonna do he's he did the the nil series.  That is like a mega deep dive So people can look forward to that so um anyway will thank you very much for being here Congrats on all your success and maybe someday at a drum show we'll meet in person, uh, but until then Yes, thank you for being here my friend. Thanks a lot For the pleasure


One of the interesting ways that some of these large-scale frauds have happened is that someone who's like, say, the head of the lab gives the junior people a set of data and says, look, here's the data set. Let's analyze this and write a paper on it. What never pops into their head is that their mentor, in a way, their scientific hero, the person they wanted to come and work with, often you go to a university to work with a very specific individual to get your degree. Nowadays, it just doesn't occur to them that that person might have made up the data the weekend before and given it to me to discover, quote unquote, what their results are and so on when they already know. That's an example of what we'd call a commitment. You sort of have the assumption that the data came from a legitimate process, like someone ran the experiment somewhere and now I have the data and you don't ask enough questions and asking your boss, did you fake this last week? Not going to go over well. There's always the social and the power and the other dynamics about asking questions, which is part of why it's hard. Even just the social dynamics of being like the one guy in the sales meeting who asks hard questions of the salespeople, like that can be hard in some cultures, some cultures, some organizational cultures and so on.  That's one reason why we say in the book, it's often good to try to get advice from an outsider who doesn't necessarily have the same assumptions in their head, who doesn't have the same history of familiarity and trust with the sources, who hasn't been paying attention to all the things you have and maybe has been looking at some different things. There are plenty of examples where massive frauds could have been avoided if the person who was defrauded listened to somebody else who thought it was a fraud before they got started into it. We have a great example of a con artist who was about to con some French businessman out of $3 million or something like that. The businessman's friend happened to walk in during the Skype call where this con was happening and said, when the friend went to the bathroom, he said, I think this is a con and hadn't occurred to the guy yet. That's why in science, we do try to have a culture of independent replication. We make things public, we publish the papers, other scientists should be free to try to replicate the same stuff and they have a different view. Sometimes it's unpleasant when you publish something and then someone else says, I tried it again and I didn't get exactly the same results, but we're engaged in a collective endeavor, not individual glory-seeking process in science. Although some people are in it partly for that reason or entirely for that reason, but that's not the social purpose of it, which we have to keep in mind. Our vanity and wanting to get ahead of everyone else plays into that line as well, where it's like, oh, I've got the skinny, I'm moving up, I got this, I can't share this with anybody.  And of course, you want to believe that you do, that you were the smart guy who figured out the shortcut, who asked the right questions and got the right line. So some people have the reputation and many people had this reputation in the past. Their experiments always work and people started even coming up with explanations for this. One prominent psychologist said that you have to have flair, f-l-a-i-r, like some kind of ineffable ability to make the experiment work that can't be written down. There's no recipe for it. It's almost like magic or something like that. I don't think he intended it to mean magic, but it's a quality that's so hard to bottle that you either have it or you don't, and that is not the way science works. Science doesn't work where if I assemble the rocket, it makes it to the moon, but if the next guy with the same training and so on assembles the rocket by the same instruction manual, it crashes. That's not the way it's supposed to work. And yes, incentives of course can cause greater effort and greater work and greater achievement, but they can also cause greater fraud. Because if there are two ways of getting the award, the legitimate way and the illegitimate way, you're probably going to cause more of each way to happen once you put the award out there. You might almost argue that the more rewards and honors and so on there aren't a field, the more attempts there are going to be to game them in some way.


Five noted men are swindled by two uneducated minors. A man buys a few dollars worth of brass for $3,000. The Battle of Bunker Hill never occurred. Can you imagine that? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is Lindsey McCarrie back again with another assortment of odd facts and news items with which to regale you for the next few moments. Until we return to prove those statements, we hope you'll wait around for us just a moment or two, will you? Thank you. The Battle of Bunker Hill never occurred. And that is correct. The Battle of Bunker Hill never occurred. Why? Well, the fact is that during the War of the American Revolution on the evening of June 16, 1775, colonial forces under the command of Major General Israel Putnam and Colonel William Prescott started to entrench on an elevation north of Boston known as Bunker Hill. But probably because the soil was hard and unmanageable, they retired to another hill known as Breeds Hill. And there they dug in their trenches and waited for the British forces under the command of General Thomas Gage. At length, the two armies met. When the British forces arrived, General Gage had lengthed the two armies met with considerable loss on both sides. Not on Bunker Hill, but on Breeds Hill. And so today the famed Bunker Hill Monument is really completely misnamed. Well, here's a very interesting story that proves how the first flush of an exciting discovery may blind everyone to the use of common ordinary horse sense. It was in the summer of 1871 that two tanned leathery skin prospectors showed up at the Bank of California in San Francisco. Slouching up to the teller's window, the spokesman for the two prospectors asked, Hey, meet my pardoner here. He'd like to know if we could store so to cash away some valuables in this here bank. Valuables? Oh, I suppose so. You could rent a safety deposit box and put the valuables in it, but it'll cost money. And so? Well, I didn't expect to get nothing for nothing here. All right, we can pay for it. Very well. Your name, please? My name is John Slag. This is my partner, Phillip Arnold. Howdy. How do you do? And the valuables? Right here in this sack. Here, I'll dump them out for you. There you are, son. Lock them till we get back.  Did you ever see diamonds, rubies, and emeralds before? Well, I've never seen that many in one place. Well, lock them up and give me the key. Me and my partner's got to get back to our diggings to get some more of these toys. Come on, Phillip. And leaving the bank clerk staring after them, the two miners slouched off. Immediately, the clerk rushed to the head of the bank, William C. Ralston, a shrewd, intelligent man with a flair for speculation. Ralston found the two miners, talked with them, and offered to buy a half-share in their discovery. But Ralston didn't do it before he heard the reports of geologists, one of whom said, Mr. Ralston, I've never seen anything like this in my life. Why, why those stones are up there ready for anyone to pick them up. And they're real. No fakes. It's amazing. Why do you realize that we've barely begun to dig out the wealth on the earth? This mine and this region will soon rival South Africa as a diamond-producing center. And San Francisco can become greater than Amsterdam as a cutting and polishing center. With that report ringing in his ears, William C. Ralston got together men like Horace Greeley, General George B. McClellan, Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of the famed Tiffany's in New York, and wonder of wonders, Baron Rothschild, head of the far-famed banking house. The men were enthusiastic, and they met the two miners, Slack and Arnold. Mr. Slack, Mr. Arnold, my partners and I are prepared to offer you a top price of $700,000 for your half-interest in your mines. Now, that's reasonable considering that you're to share in the final profits, and we put up the money for developments, equipment, and labor.  Well, I ain't hankering to let go of it for so little. Your experts told you them stones would worth close to a million, and we brung in another bag full of diamonds worth easy that much. Ah, yeah, but $700,000 is as high as we'll go. And you'll realize greater profits from your half-interest when we start to work the mines. Well, all right, I reckon you're playing fair. We'll take it. And take the $700,000 they did. Ralston and his associates organized a company with a capital of $10 million. Gorgeous offices were opened, and it was announced that San Francisco would soon replace Amsterdam as the center of the diamond industry of the world. Then, when things were running along smoothly, two government geologists got a little suspicious. They went to the mine and take a look at this. This stone shows the marks of a lapidary tool and cut. There aren't any stones in nature that you'll find already cut. It's too good. Yeah, and I found diamonds, rubies, and emeralds in the same matrix, in the same mother stone, and that just doesn't happen in nature. Boy, somebody's been taken to the tune of plenty of money. Why, these stones aren't worth over $10,000 at the most. They're all second-rate. What happened? How did a man of Ralston's ability happen to be taken in on such an old dodge as a salted mine? Well, remember that it happened in the days when the United States was in a fever of excitement over nature's wealth buried under the ground. Gold and silver had been found in vast quantities. Why not diamonds, emeralds, and rubies? At any rate, it remains as one of the most gigantic swindles in the history of confidence games. Ralston and his associates repaid all the money advanced, but for a long time, they were accosted on the streets by rude persons who asked... Say, I got some diamonds here. I'd like you to take a look at. And thus ended the gigantic diamond swindle of 1871 when two famous bankers, a leading journalist, a noted soldier, and the man who founded one of the leading jewelry concerns of the world were all taken in by two leathery-skinned, rough-talking miners. And here's another case in the American Southland where the principal character learned that all is not gold but glisters. And by the way, that's the way Shakespeare said it originally. All is not gold but glisters, not glitters. Anyway, it was on February 1, 1939 that three men walked into the malt shop of Herbert Segal of Los Angeles, one of them a rather tall, elegant-looking gent wearing a monocle remark. Say, I'd like to settle down here and own a little shop like this. I imagine you do a pretty good business. Oh, it's not so bad. What would you take for it? Well, I really don't know. Well, uh, how about $2,000? I'll offer you that. Oh, thank you. Well, I hadn't thought about selling, but that's a pretty fair price, all right. If you're anxious to buy, I'll sell for that. The elegant gentleman wearing the monocle had only $1,000 in cash on his person, so said his partner to Mr. Segal. Tell you what, I've got a box here with dental gold in it. The gold's worth $5,300. $5,300? Say, isn't it pretty dangerous? Well, I don't know. I don't know. But I'll tell you what we'll do. My friend here will give you the $1,000 he has in cash. I'll give you this gold. And you give me $3,000 for the gold. And we'll come back later with the sales forms. And I'll buy back my gold. Uh, let me see the gold. All right, there you are. Well, uh, it looks like a lot of gold. All right, it's a deal. Mr. Segal, pay for it. All right, it's a deal. Mr. Segal paid $3,000 for the gold. The men left with the money and left Mr. Segal holding not the bag, but the box filled with dental gold. Mr. Segal waited and waited and waited.  Swindled? These aren't gold dental fillings. They're brass. And you paid $3,000 for them. And so, Mr. Herbert Segal of Los Angeles, his eyes blinded momentarily by the flagrant flash of brass, paid $3,000 for a few dollars' worth of junk. Can you imagine that? Well, well, well, what's this? Oh, what's the annual banquet of my lodge? Youses. Some fun, huh? There'll be speeches, jokes, paper hats, many cigars, and then the annual election of officers. And when that's all over and the new president is announced, the whole gang will rise and sing.  Yes, sir. For he's a jolly good fellow. I have no doubt that you've sung that very same song many many times in your days, but where did it come from? Well that I'm afraid is more or less of a mystery. One thing sure it's very very old, older than any student of the history of music can vouch for. For instance, one source I found says that this tune, known to us today as for he's a jolly good fellow or we won't get home until morning, has been known for many centuries by the Arabs of Egypt as Malbruk Saffir Lel Harbi. Another source reveals that there is a possibility that the tune was carried into the land of the heathen by Christian crusaders. And still another authority claims that that song commemorates the unsuccessful attempts of John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, to undermine the monarchy of Louis XIV of France. At any rate the tune is certainly an old one, and the oldest lyrics we've been able to find seem to bear out the latter story of the Duke of Marlborough. Here we have our male quartet singing an English translation of ancient verses to the original of the melody we know today as for he's a jolly good fellow. To fight the foe in battle, mit-a-toe, mit-a-toe, mit-a-taina To fight the foe in battle, Sir Malboreau has gone, Sir Malboreau has gone, Sir Malboreau has gone To fight the foe in battle, mit-a-toe, mit-a-toe, mit-a-taina To fight the foe in battle, Sir Malboreau has gone And despite the story in that song, the words meritom, meritom, meritina have absolutely no meaning. Can you imagine that? Well, I guess it's about time once more to turn you over to your own announcer. And until we meet again on another session of Can You Imagine That, this is Lindsey McCurry saying goodbye now.


Come in, very pleased to say we've got lots of innovations for you tonight, one is a new technology, so Dr. Wanto's lecture will be recorded and viewable on the website in a few days, if you talk about this. If I could talk to all of the talks on the website now, so please visit the website. The other innovation is that Dr. Wanto is a social demographer, so his classical work was on migration studies. Indonesia is a very large country with a large demography and a great deal of migration. He's been in that field for a long time, but he's also worked in the archaeological field. This is really the beginning of a scientific study of the impact of archaeological science on the societies surrounding them. So that's a complex subject where you really need to know the internal pressures in a society. The various constituencies involved are the fact that some of you have got massive archaeological science being uncovered and massive influx of new people who don't learn a lot about the place. Some of them do, but most of them don't. So the impacts are interesting and we all need to be aware and alert to some of the issues that arise from that. I haven't found much in the literature at all on the subject, so I think Dr. Wanto is a pioneer in this subject. That's because it's a multidisciplinary subject, which is being applied to a new area. So I'd like to welcome Dr. Wanto, who is from the LUPI, which is a very large research institution in Indonesia. As you don't know it, it's far bigger than SOAS. It's several thousand researchers in many disciplines distributed around Java, principally. And we're lucky to have a lecture because his daughter is going to collect MA from Edinburgh next week and he's going to attend that. So welcome to SOAS. Thank you Peter for a very kind introduction and good evening everybody. I feel very honored but also rather nervous to be here in this very prestigious place, SOAS, which I only heard before but then this today I have been here. And as Peter has mentioned earlier, I'm a social demographer by training. I study at ANU, Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. But I work in a research institute which is basically a multidisciplinary researchers there. It belongs to one of the centres under the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, or LUPI. And my research centre is called Research Centre for Society and Cultures. So we are mostly not an economist, we are not a political scientist, they have their own centres. We are mostly sociologists, anthropologists, a couple of archaeologists, myself a social demographer. So in our centres we tend to approach research issues from multidisciplinary approach. And in the last five years I decided to concentrate on the development in Java, Java Island. Before as a social demographer I used to study migrations, movement of people, so mostly outside Java. My work firstly on the issues of transmigrations, state sponsored movement of people, mostly outside Java. Since the last five years I devoted my time to look at Java with my team work. So the study on the politics of cultural heritage actually is one of my previous work. It has been finished just last year, it was conducted within three years. And what I want to present is only a part of the research finding that we are doing. So as I talk with Peter we agree to talk about how the local communities surrounding the historical site, the archaeological site actually responding to the existence of the site itself, but also responding to the opportunities that is open in relation to the historical sites. We decided to look at the three major sites in Java which I'm sure all of you are very familiar. First the border Buddhist temples in Central Java. This is the artefact of the 7th to 9th centuries Japanese Buddhist kingdom at the time, which I think is one of the famous cultural heritage in the world. And the second one is rather less knowledgeable, that is the ruin of Hindu Majapite kingdoms in East Java, a place called Trowulan and it was exist during the 12th and 13th centuries. So after the Buddhist kingdoms. And the third site that we decided to look is the ruin of Islamic Sultanate in Bandan Lama, between 15th and 16th centuries. Bandan is the new province before it's part of the West Java province. So after 2000 they decided, the people of Bandan decided to have their own province. This is also an interesting development if you look at the Indonesian political development because after the Suharto government's step down, Indonesia is actually entering into a new political development in which decentralizations, the regional autonomy is underway. And I would like to mention this because we are conducting these studies within that context of the new kind of regional autonomy. So the center is actually no longer dominate the political development. So this is the three cultural heritage that we are working with. And we are trying to approach the issues from rather loosely this design research methodology, what we call it for the moment, the political economic approach. And within that approach we basically look at how the stakeholders, we identify who are actually the stakeholders within each sites who are dealing with these cultural heritage sites. So within this approach we look at the aspect of history, but also how the regulations as well as the economy. And we also look at almost all stakeholders, both the states or the governments, the society, the private sectors because you must be familiar with the tourism, this is always part of the cultural heritage activities here, but also the society surrounding the cultural heritage which in my top will be the focus of my presentations. So by this approach then we actually try to analyze the different interests of the stakeholders that contest to obtain benefit both economically and politically from that cultural heritage sites. The result of conflict and cooperation between the states, private sectors, the international organizations as well as the society constitute the measurements of the current condition as well as the likely futures of our cultural heritage. So the idea of this research is trying to analyze, to map out who are actually the stakeholders who are working within that cultural heritage site and how actually the relations between the stakeholders who have their own interests here. It's rather a simple approach, but I think it's very interesting because we are not an archeologist like Peter and I are here maybe. So we look at the cultural heritage from a really non-archological perspective. We look at cultural heritage as a side of a contestation of stakeholders who try to get benefit from that historical site. And let's start with the trolan. The existing situation is the ruins or the artifacts that are scattered in several sub-districts and suffer from a clear management policy. This is our finding. There are many sites within that cultural heritage site because we found that each site is managed by different authorities and this is really posing this site's risk for further damage. So there is no one management in that site. This is very important findings. And the local communities that occupy the archeological site, the surrounding areas, I think need to be given an economic alternative within the sustainable cultural heritage management framework. That is the finding because I will show you that through some... This is our report. We have three sites, so we have three reports. This is on the Majapite site. And this is what I mean by the threat from the local communities. This is actually an area that is very huge. And the local communities are mostly working to make tiles. So they dig the soils and you can imagine that almost in this area all the artifacts actually is within this underneath of the soil. So you can imagine how the people activities, the economic activities of the people who are digging the soil are really threatening the sites. This is a picture of what is some of the local communities actually doing. They are producing souvenirs. And you can see how actually very simple workshops there. And you can also imagine the level of economic welfare of these people. So they are making souvenirs for tourists in Trabulon. This is also another more advanced kind of fragments who make statues of the old kingdoms of Trabulon. The tourist industry is growing. But as no clear one management of the site you can imagine that all are developing on their own way. And this is just an example how the people actually are making their life from the tourists who are coming to this site. This is a Muslim community in Trabulon. Trabulon is a ruin of Hindu kingdoms. As almost everywhere in Java now the population are Muslims, Muslim Muslims. And this is a very interesting development in that site because this Muslim group found also or claim also that within the Majapahit kingdom there are a history of the Muslim peoples. And these Muslim groups with their own initiatives tried to claim that there is a Muslim cultural heritage within the Majapahit cultural heritage. So they even built their own kind of buildings based on their interpretations which actually shows how the surrounding people who are Muslim Muslims actually tried to claim that even though this is a Hindu kingdom but they also have Islamic kind of dimensions. And they are dominating the site and developing and building their own symmetry. They develop a big complex of what they claim as Muslim saints in that area. And again it shows how the management of that cultural heritage actually is beyond the state's control. Every site has their own constituents and they claim they control the sites. And you can also imagine that even the Buddhist group create their own temples which is also very interesting how again the different group actually claim they have attachments to the cultural heritage which is basically a Hindu kingdom. It's a very big sleeping Buddha. It's not far from the Hindu temples. So again they are interpreting or based on their own perspective and they want to show that they are also part of this heritage. This is only built in 1980 something, this very new regions. So again you can see how active the community is in claiming within that site. There's another development if you follow the news from East Java. There is a plan to make a steel plant a kind of factories. Well this is really a business people who want to make a steel plant factories. And exactly within the area of the cultural heritage sites. And luckily a group of young people from the surrounding areas working with the NGOs in Surabaya that's the capital of East Java and try to stop this planning. And I think they are very successful in stopping the development of this plan. So you can see they already made some progress there but at the moment this development is already stopped. Again I want to show you how the cultural heritage which is a Hindu kingdom and becoming attractions of the different stakeholders and try to claim a kind of attachment to that site. Both the business people as well as the religious groups as well as the local communities. So now I move to the second site. This is Borobudur which must be a well-known one. I think it's very clear that this is the most advanced model of cultural heritage governance in Indonesia in which the international and national governments co-exists. As you know UNESCO plays a very active role in restoring Borobudur. And until now they are still giving advice and partly financed the management of the Borobudur sites. At the site however a contestation occurs between this is the new development local government because now the regional autonomy is given to the so-called district level governments with the management of the Borobudur. It's under the Ministry of Pewemen. That's the, what is the, under the Ministry of Pewemen. Pewemen is the state-owned enterprise. But also with the archaeological office that is belong or under the Ministry of Cultures. Of course with the local communities. So you can see how the contestation is occurring between different stakeholders both international and local as well as the communities. In that process we found that the local communities perceive themselves as being excluded in the process of managing the cultural heritage. This is the, maybe the most profitable tourist destinations. So you can imagine if the money is actually backed by the state-owned enterprise then the local communities generally are excluded within that management. This is the situation in Borobudur. It's very different with Trauland, the first sites. This is more advanced in terms of the management. But still you can see how the local communities actually is excluded within the management of the cultural heritage. One of the interesting findings that we found in this Borobudur site is the constant protests from the local communities. If you look at the history of the restorations of Borobudur since early 70s and then 80s, as the sites need a kind of wide landscape, they move out the people from the sites. And these people, still throughout the Nuket generations, interestingly, still continue protesting that kind of event. They still remember how they were pushed out and so on and so on. And this has become a very interesting development because again it seems that there is no clear kind of regulation how to divide the benefits of these sites, both the local governments, the local populations and this state-owned enterprise who actually control dominating the sites. And with the new law on the regional autonomy, I think then the contestations between the local government and this state-owned enterprise is becoming very clear now. And again, as my focus of the talk is on the local communities, it also shows very clearly how they actually are not really part of the management. They were marginalized and they were continuously protesting what they perceive as improper management of the sites. Again, as commonly found everywhere in the cultural heritage sites, people try to make things for tourism, souvenirs and so on. And I think it's very clear that Borobudur is one of the most attractive destination for the international tourism and people try to make use of this and try to get benefit from these situations. Another issue that is currently being seen as a problem is how to maintain the Borobudur from a huge number of tourists who are climbing the temples. And my colleagues who are archaeologists believe that when they step to the stone, they will erase some part of that. So there is a kind of concern about how to manage these issues. But so far, I don't think there is a clear solution on these issues. The third site that we are interested in is a ruin of Islamic sultanate in Tantan. Compared with the other two, this is the most endangered site. This archaeological site is threatened by the absence of clear state policy on cultural heritage management. No such thing like heritage management in this site. It was left to outside government agencies. So there is a continuation of fragmented authority in which this is very interesting with this site, in which different genealogical and inheritance claim exists, create uncertainty in the future of this cultural heritage. So there are at least two families who claim to be the direct ancestors of the sultanate, at least two who are claiming at the moment. And they are controlling the most important part of the site, which is the mosque and its surroundings. So you can imagine if these Muslim groups who are very powerful claiming the sites, then nobody dare to kind of enter into that area, even the government. So it's really left to the private groups. So in our study we found that unless a proper management is able to be formulated and is able to be implemented, I think the futures of this Islamic sultanate site is really in danger. I will show you some. This is the most important part of that site. This is the mosque. And this really belongs to the private families who are contested between two families. And it's very interesting we found that eventually they are agreed to share. So they are taken in controlling the site. What is their benefit? Indonesia is now becoming a very kind of Islamic country in which religious tourism is increasing. And Bandan Lama is one of the Muslims' tourist destinations. And if you control this mosque, then you will be able to tap the donation actually, which is given by the tourist to the mosque. And almost every day you can find a lot of buses coming to this place. And it's very clear if you control this site, then you will get a kind of economic benefit. This is actually the sites of the sultanates. It's all there without clear management. And if you look at the site, then the mosque actually is the most looked after artifacts. Again, it's because it was controlled, but also because it's not a debt monument. It's a living monument. People are coming to pray, they use the mosque and so on. Friday prayers and so on. It's a living monument. But again, people's surroundings are trying to get benefits from the local tourism, not properly designed. They are scattered throughout the areas. I think it's also become a problem in the preservation of that site. So compared with Borobudur, this site is really left behind. The worst situation compared with the other two. This is what we try to get information. The method that we use as a research is conducting a kind of local workshop. Local workshop and trying to discuss with all the stakeholders what are their perceptions, what are they doing, what are they hoping about the site and so on. On the three sides, we are organizing a local workshop as part of our method to get the information. It's a very interesting exercise because Lipe is also a government. This is an institute and they normally are very cooperative and they are happy to talk with us. And we try to find what is the best way to solve the problems. So in each site we conducted kind of local workshops. Invited both the state officials, the private sectors, the local populations, as well as the academics who are working in the area. So to conclude I think we found that while local communities always exist, they are generally ignored and excluded in the official management of the cultural heritage. The involvement of local communities accepts in Borobudur. Manifest in various forms of activities. More often they are not threatening the preservation of the cultural heritage. So it's become very logical that to find a balance between purposeful preservation on the one side and sustainable economic development is a major challenge in the cultural heritage management in these three major cultural heritage sites in Java. Well that's all I can tell to you and I hope you can get some insight about the situations in Java in general and also these three major cultural heritage. So you can imagine if this major site is not properly managed then you can find other sites in many places in Indonesia actually. We are struggling to preserve, restore and so on. But again there is likely major problems in our way to manage our cultural heritage. And it's also becoming very interesting to see people actually becoming more interested in talking, discussing and involving engagements in the issues of cultural heritage. And this is something that I think is very good development in Indonesia at the moment. I think I will stop there. I hope it gives you some ideas of what is happening in Indonesia.