The first songfests of this kind that I attended (Seattle in the very early 1950s) were referred to as "hoots," short for "hootenanny," which, at the time was not a public performance, it was a get-together of folk music enthusiasts. Bring your guitar, your banjo, your autoharp, or whatever, and / or your voice. Often, they took place in someone's living room, and they were a sort of open house affair. There was no separation between "performers" and "audience."

There was no organization, no structure, and nobody laying down rules. We didn't go around in a circle or anything like that. We took turns singing, but nobody kept track, and everyone got a shot at it. If someone appeared eager to sing, everyone else would shut up and let them hold forth. And that included anyone who didn't normally sing. It was friendly and supportive and people respected each other. For someone taking his or her first plunge into singing in front of other people, it was about as receptive an audience as one could ask for, warm and encouraging (after all, we'd all been there). Oftentimes there was some kind of lubricant, such as beer or jug wine, but I don't recall anyone ever getting sloshed. This was pretty much the structure (or lack thereof) that I encountered in other cities as well.

It wasn't until 1963 and the "ABC Hootenanny" television program on Saturday nights that "hootenanny" started meaning "a multi-act or multi-performer concert" with the singers up here and the audience down there.

In the late 1970s, the first "song circle" (which I presume is essentially the same thing as a "singaround") got organized here. It did have structure and rules. The idea was that it would be a literal "song circle." Everyone sat around in a circle and once it was decided whether we were going clockwise or counter-clockwise, when your turn came up, you could sing, request a song from someone else, or simply pass. This worked pretty well also, but it was a bit stiffer than the "hoots" that I first went to.

It was later that they became even more structured, even to the point of people sitting around and singing out of "Rise Up Singing," kind of like a hymn-sing, and if it wasn't in the book, or a different version from the one in the book, it was frowned upon. When that sort of thing took over, I sort of lost interest.

We geezers (mostly veterans of that era before the onset of the Great Folk Scare), along with a bunch of younger folks, still get together in each other's living rooms and have "hoots" the way we used to.

I don't know if this adds anything of value to the discussion. Just a bit of nostalgia.

Don Firth