[okchorale] Re: Folk for NEFFA?

["Paula Lieberman" <paal@xxxxxxx>]

There's quite a bit of folk tradition stuff which is fantasy -- e.g. The
Demon Lover, there are songs about selkies, etc.

----- Original Message -----
From: Joe Kesselman <keshlam@attglobal.net>



> Paul Ciszek wrote:
> > If we are planning a guerilla performance at NEFFA, perhaps we should
> > have something folky prepared.
>
> NEFFA spans a very wide range of styles and puts a heavy emphasis on
> education, so I'm not sure it's any more necessary for us to perpare
> something in the American Standard Folk tradition than it would be for a
> zydeco band, or the morris dancers, or the folks doing Balkin tunes, or
> the sea chanty groups, or...
>
> My own take -- which folks are welcome to critique -- is that "guerilla
> filk" probably needs more of an emphasis on stuff which nonfilkers can
> pick up quickly and understand without needing a deep filk/sf/science
> background. Strong performances of strong songs which stand alone and
> have sing-along or call-and-response parts might be optimal... but as
> noted above, while it's good to do some participatory stuff I don't
> think we're boxed into it; we could do as much or as little as we want.
>
> So Paul's suggestion, which is an interesting one, should be viewed as
> an opportunity rather than a requrement. If we want to go for it, great;
> if not, that decision won't hurt us. My only concern is that we may want
> to pick songs which would also work well for a filk audience... and that
> we've already got a bit of a backlog. Though we're starting to get good
> enough at some of our existing material that all we may need is a once-
> or twice-through to help sharpen it and keep it fresh, which will give
> us more time to work on new songs.
>
>
> Might be worth going through Walkabout's book, and Rise Up Singing, some
> time to find out how much of that material's already in our shared
> repertoire and how much of it we already know harmonies for. Walkabout
> had some very nice four-part-harmony stuff ... unfortunately, most of it
> was collectively ad-libbed and then passed along via oral tradition,
> which means that I probably know only the melody and the bass part.]]
>
>
>
>   "When I'm Gone" is easy to learn, but then,
> > I'm partial to Phil Ochs.
> >
> > Last night at Psinging I learned that some 4-part rounds can be turned
> > into 8-part rounds if you run two clocks in quadrature.
> >
> > --
> > Paul Ciszek
> > pciszek@world.std.com
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Joe Kesselman, http://www.lovesong.com/people/keshlam/
> Appearing March 10 at Walkabout, a double bill:
> Vance Gilbert shares our stage with Stone Soup
> http://www.WalkaboutClearwater.org/coffeehouse.html
>
>