[okchorale] Re: Folk for NEFFA?

["Paula Lieberman" <paal@xxxxxxx>]

Mainstream and Political in general doesn't much interest me.... not
generally in category of "songs I actually want to hear" much less
learn/sing.  One year at the end of Arisia I sang part of a Hebrew prayer
because I was TOTALLY fed up with being on the receiving end of things like
"Lullaby for a Weary World"....

From: Joe Kesselman <keshlam@attglobal.net>


> Paula Lieberman wrote:
> > There's quite a bit of folk tradition stuff which is fantasy -- e.g. The
> > Demon Lover, there are songs about selkies, etc.
>
> That is one approach; gods know I've swiped a lot of that.
>
> On the other hand, it doesn't have to be that explicitly bound; consider
> some of the stuff the Black Book Band was doing, which was pretty much
> pure folk-rock. MEW still does a fair amount of material in that
> category. For that matter, the cat material can be considered
> folk-which-appeals-to-filkers rather than pure filk.
>
> So you can certainly "sell"  folk to filkers -- after all, that's where
> many (most?) of us have our strongest musical roots -- but you need to
> either do it unusually well, or find a way to tie it in, or catch/manage
> the mood. Otherwise you risk the situation I've sometimes seen: "Good
> voice, good instrument skills, but I wish s/he would learn a few songs
> that I actually want to hear."