What is 'feral folk music'?

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: glueman
Date: 24 Apr 09 - 03:52 PM

If we're talking about what I believe we are most enthusiasts would recognise 'it' as simply folk music. A feral prefix suggests the music might embrace outsider status and proscription rather than feeling thwarted by rejecting mechanisms.
Definition would be tentative at best and subject to whatever nuance or plurality the performer/collator brings to it. Folk music without the affectations or grumpiness in other words.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Apr 09 - 05:05 PM

I was there when he said it honest

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Rafflesbear
Date: 24 Apr 09 - 05:12 PM

Having started the thread that lead to this debate may I say that my intention was not to define a new genre of music, the music is the same and as recognisable as any other folk music. The distinction comes only in where it is played and to whom it is played

Some artists, and I am increasingly forming the opinion that it is relatively few artists, are leaving the comfort zone of the folk clubs and festivals where an offering of two consecutive notes in tune will bring a round of applause to go out into the wider world where the audience are not folkies and where you impress or die (in the stage sense!)

Musically any difference is purely that which is necessary to please the wider audience and achieve a rebooking. At times you sell your soul with the ninety ninth rendition of Wild Rover or Fields of Athenry but the satisfaction comes from slipping in the obscure and self penned and winning people over and getting reactions like these

"You've just converted someone who hates Folk Music - I was meant to be going home an hour and a half ago"

"I don't know much about folk music, but I do enjoy watching/listening to you guys"

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Apr 09 - 05:53 PM

It is rather a shame that Rafflesbear feels the need to put down much folk music in order to portray his proteges in a better light.   His proteges present well and probably do not need to denigrate others. There are of course many singing and playing in folk clubs and festivals who can knock many spots off them, and having heard only last year what they modestly said about their chord sequences my impression would be that the band would not set out to divide in that way either.

It seems however that the coinage of the phrase has occurred twice (at least) and that the respective coiners had entirely different intentions as to meaning. I understand Rafflesbear's meaning in that he uses the term to describe "folk" (in the widest sense) song that is residing outside a tame environment, and must live on what it can achieve outside that tame environment.

When my late wife and I (and others) did folk music in pubs rather than folk clubs or folk-specific environments I would describe it as proselytisation, and it is not new. The late Dave Bryant of this place and Linda would walk into pubs and ask if they could sing.

Growler's sessions have always (afaik) been in open pubs and not in back rooms.   

A previous man of my wife's, Dave Wiltshire, supplemented his truck driving income by playing in pubs and working men's clubs.

So, while Rafflesbear's proteges do well what they do, they are not unique in doing it where they do it.

The other form described on this thread is something I do not recognise or understand.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Apr 09 - 05:54 PM

PS. I don't mean it is without merit, I simply don't understand what it is.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Rafflesbear
Date: 24 Apr 09 - 06:15 PM

Richard - I certainly did not set out intentionally to denigrate and I hope that that was not how my post was read by the majority

I presume that on this occasion you allude to the two consecutive notes in tune phrase ? There have been occasions when I have sat through excruciating performances in folk clubs and at the end of it there is applause - I would be surprised if you have not encountered this yourself. The point of mentioning it on this occasion was to draw the comparison with the unforgiving nature of the alternative

My apologies if it came out otherwise - and yes there are people out there so good it makes you weep and if they are playing in a non-folk environment I very much hope they will post in the Feral Folk What's On thread

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Apr 09 - 06:23 PM

We have feral cats and chickens and hogs in California - but sadly, no feral folk.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 Apr 09 - 08:07 AM

Here's some choice Feral Folk from the Netherlands. Check it out:

http://www.myspace.com/dblolaq

Top sounds; and he's got some interesting things to say as well. I tell you, people like this restore my faith in music!

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Zen
Date: 30 Apr 09 - 08:22 AM

That's as fine a post from Gargoyle as I've seen in 10 years here and also sums up my feelings on the matter better than I could myself.

Zen

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 01 May 09 - 09:20 AM

According to one definition on this thread, doing "feral folk music" appears to mean taking material which most folk club regulars would recognise as "folk" out to venues other than folk clubs, and to people who would never normally go into folk clubs. There's nothing novel about doing this.   It was providing a livelihood for professionals like Alex Campbell, Miriam Makeba, Josh White and Pete Seeger long ago, when folk clubs as we know them hardly existed. Many amateurs have also kept on doing it through boom years and lean years alike - because we enjoy it, and because we believe it matters.

In Britain, folk club regulars used to call people who did this "entertainers" – sometimes approvingly, sometimes disparagingly, depending on their ideological stance. Meanwhile, show business professionals called people who did it "folk singers" – a label often resented by historians, musicologists and folk-club diehards, but well enough understood by the general public. Do we really need a new name for this activity now? Probably not - but democracy will eventually decide whether it becomes common currency.

As for the other definition of "feral folk music" on offer here – this also seems to promise us nothing new. Ever since the folk balloon of the 1960s began to deflate and descend, marketing people have been hyping new musical products with a "This is Folk – but not as we know it, Jim" spin. In Britain, the sub-text to this sales pitch has often been "This is the REAL folk music of TODAY! All those boring people stuck in the folk-club time warp will hate it – therefore YOU are going to love it!"

Over the years, that line of patter has become almost as boring a cliché as the Arran-sweatered, finger-in-ear folkie image which it sought to displace. (fRoots and SmoothOps, please note.) Will it hit the jackpot this time? Probably not - but if it puts a few more bums on seats, and keeps a few more musicians off the dole, then good luck to it.

Wassail!

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Rifleman (inactive)
Date: 01 May 09 - 12:14 PM

It is rather a shame that Rafflesbear feels the need to put down much folk music in order to portray his proteges in a better light.

Is Richard Bridge reading something that's only visible to his eyes? I see nothing that is even remotely a put down of 'folk' music in any of rafflesbear's postings.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 01 May 09 - 01:01 PM

Thought I'd missed something obvious but didn't want to show my ignorance.
On MoN's point I'd point him to Sinister's fiercely anti-commercial stance for feral folk. I don't perceive it as folk-lite, compromising or accessible, rather the opposite.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 01 May 09 - 02:10 PM

Hi glueman!

You may be right - so far I have had no experience of the music Sinister is making, and the fierce anti-commercialism you speak of could well be genuine.

However ... in the past, ambitious performers seeking to acquire "cult status" in the media have been known to affect an anti-commerical pose. Such a gesture appeals to self-proclaimed music connoisseurs who like to confirm their "outsider" credentials by extravagantly praising (allegedly) non-commercial acts. Yet if these "cult" performers do somehow happen to reach bigger audiences, they rarely decline the big bucks that follow. Which enables their "cult" fans to get an extra buzz out of rejecting them for "selling out". Which provides something for music journalists to write about, and fans to argue about. Which all helps to keep the wheels of the music biz turning.

So, my cynical assumption was that "feral folk" might have been launched by performers with similar aspirations. After all, advertising yourself as the creator of an exciting new genre can help to establish (or expand) a cult following. Of course I could be mistaken - this has been known before! - in which case, my apologies to all concerned.

Wassail!

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 01 May 09 - 02:28 PM

If it were marketable in a mass way I'd suggest it couldn't be feral. Unless homespun experimental acoustic sounds become de riguer, in which case the artist probably wasn't trying hard enough!

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 01 May 09 - 06:02 PM

"If it were marketable in a mass way I'd suggest it couldn't be feral."

Seasick Steve?

Wassail!

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 01 May 09 - 06:46 PM

the comfort zone of the folk clubs and festivals where an offering of two consecutive notes in tune will bring a round of applause

I think this is the 'denigrating' Richard's talking about. I sing at folk clubs, I work hard at what I do and I take pride in doing it well - and I know the difference between getting a polite ripple of applause and doing something that'll be respected by my peers or make an audience sit up and take notice. Sure, I could wander along unprepared, sing out of a book, lose the tune halfway through and still get that polite ripple of applause, and maybe for some performers that thought does offer a 'comfort zone'. Not for any self-respecting performer, though - and most of us are, even(!) in folk clubs.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 02 May 09 - 02:55 AM

If I may say so that idea of slick, uniform, virtuoso, predictable entertainment is not what some of us think of as folk music at all, self-respecting or otherwise.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 May 09 - 03:36 AM

slick, uniform, virtuoso, predictable entertainment

bores me to tears. I'm not slick, I'm not a virtuoso and I try not to be predictable, let alone uniform. I do, however, work hard at what I do and take pride in doing it well.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 02 May 09 - 04:10 AM

I agree with you in that case PR. Nothing against traditional acoustic popular entertainment, it's just not the whole folk thing.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 May 09 - 05:25 AM

I agree with you in that case PR.

]falls off chair[

Cheers!

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 May 09 - 05:39 AM

sing out of a book

My memory is so poor these I've taken to using printed sheets for new songs that just won't go in. This is a practical necessity, though not altogether without precedent - I've just uploaded my Gently Johnny / Song 32 sequence onto my myspace page (www.myspace.com/sedayne for the purposes of which I'm using words. There is no shame in using words - The Coppers do it, and I do it in church too when singing hymns, so why not in folk clubs?

MikeofNorthumbria

As an ex-pat Northumbrian myself I yearn for the wilds; even for the bleak pans of Cambois with fond memories of the chimneys of Blyth A & B that still haunt my dreaming, but mostly my hearts in the Jolly Fisherman at Craster, washing crab sarnies down with a bottle of Dog before a merry trudge up to Dunstanburgh Castle & beyond...

A few Merry Mays back we ensconced ourselves midst the rockpools at low tide with a diversity of gongs, pocket trumpet, singing bowls and suchlike for an afternoon of feral field-recording, & filming. Needs must I dig out the footage. I seem to recall the whole of Craster had taken on the semblance of the Wicker Man on account of them filming some TV series there - now what was all that about?

For whatever we lose, like a you or a me, it's always ourselves we find in the sea...

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 02 May 09 - 05:44 AM

mary, mungo and midge - nice one.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 02 May 09 - 09:09 AM

Sinister, is that a traditional melody for Gently Johnny - 'cos I think I'll relearn it off your page, all being rather suitable for May bank holiday weekend singing practice. As the only one I know, is that one off the Wicker Man soundtrack. Pretty as it is, I confess I'm somewhat sick of hearing (or singing) it!

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 02 May 09 - 10:07 AM

Digging your sound Sinister. After a morning ivy wrangling* it will be the accompaniment to some colonial red in the garden to celebrate May.

* ivy wrangling isn't a synonym for anything

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 02 May 09 - 10:09 AM

Do I mean euphemism, or is that a brass band instrument?

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 02 May 09 - 10:26 AM

There's so many to choose from, could I interest you in a nice metaphor, an analogy, or perhaps a pleasing simile? Or what about a morally improving parable?

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 May 09 - 03:29 PM

is that a traditional melody for Gently Johnny

I picked it up from various singers over the years, most recently from the singing of Frank Williamson in Durham, who thinks of it as an old Northumbrian melody. Just checked DigiTrad (Here) and it's the same tune. Rapunzel informs me they used to sing SATB arrangement at school, so all things considered I'd say it was traditional.

See also: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=45593#674591

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 03 May 09 - 04:55 AM

mary, mungo and midge - nice one.

Not a great fan of poetry, I nevertheless have my favourite poem - and this is it. I first came across it back around 1976 on the cover of an LP of free improvisation on the Incus label called Balance (Frank Perry, Ian Brighton, Phil Waschman, Colin Wood & Radu Malfatti - and that from memory!) and latterly found it on a series of plaques embedded into the pavement in St Anne's. Not a great fan of public art (mutter mutter Anton Gormley &c.) I was nevertheless delighted, though not half as much as I am with the statue of Les Dawson they've lately erected by the pier.

Feral Sculpture at St. Anne's

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 May 09 - 08:20 AM

Check this: http://www.myspace.com/iteatsfrombowls - the best band name ever & some truly feral folk & pagan sounds...

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 May 09 - 10:55 AM

not to be confused with non ferrous-folk music.......less irony

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: glueman
Date: 21 May 09 - 12:39 PM

Teats from bowls - triffic! Nice loose timing on that drum. Can't believe they're American.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 21 May 09 - 02:06 PM

The name's so good I'm going to go pedant on you - It Eats from Bowls.

Can't believe they're American.

Now there's a good idea for a thread - things you can't believe are American. I'll nominate Terry Gilliam (although that's what Zappa said about him & his work for the Pythons) and Scott Walker.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: glueman
Date: 21 May 09 - 03:32 PM

Laurie Anderson and John Cage.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 21 May 09 - 05:43 PM

"folk clubs and festivals where an offering of two consecutive notes in tune will bring a round of applause"


Sorry dude. Go check. If you are going to diss the music, get your facts right.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST,Pigstrings
Date: 21 May 09 - 08:32 PM

I presume this means folk music played in folk clubs is domesticated folk music.

Hey, skip the feral stuff. I vote for wild folk music! Music that roams freely across the plains and forests of the British pub, festival, and village fete; the busker on the underground, the band in the boozer, and the session in the bar.....Music that interbreeds promiscuously across the genres and spawns weird and wonderful offspring.

Folk music is not a museum piece. It is a living tradition. Modern folk music is as much the popular songs we grew up listening to as it is the older songs handed down from our forefathers and rescued from oblivion for us by the likes of Cecil Sharpe etc.

Throw away the aspic and just make music is what I say. Keep it live and keep it real.

Oh, by the way, I think the original intention of this thread was to publicise events and venues. I've caught a few endangered species for display at The Old Eden, Edenbridge, Kent on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month. Open Mic session 8.30, usually with a strong folkie leaning (due to being hosted by Pig's Ear) followed by a guest from 9.30 - 11.00. We've had folk, skiffle, American folk, bluegrass, Zydeco, Ska, whateverthehellyou call Moveable Feast's excellent music...Wed. 27 we've got an out and out rock covers band, Dangerous Age. And every night a cracking good one, though we could do with more support.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 May 09 - 04:23 AM

Oh, by the way, I think the original intention of this thread was to publicise events and venues.

That was the other feral folk thread, which isn't about feral folk at all, rather playing the usual folkie stuff in non-folkie venues (as far as I can gather).

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: glueman
Date: 22 May 09 - 05:05 AM

Clubs are de facto enclosed environments with certain rules and expectations. The notion of a club has never seemed especially folk, unless institutional predictability is your idea of primal music.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Jun 09 - 04:48 PM

Feral Folk Announcement:

Just uploaded Black Sea Fiddle Improvisation & Processional field-recorded in the church of Saint Swithin, Launcells, nr. Bude in Cornwall on the 11th of June 2009.

Do check it out: http://www.myspace.com/sedayne

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: GUEST,Opinionated
Date: 25 Jun 09 - 11:16 PM

'feral folk' is what it is.

domesticated folk is what 'is done this way'.

domesticated asks, 'do you want to have success and broad appeal and make a living at your dream?' or, 'do you realize you have to play this song this way or this instrument in this style?'

feral says, 'fuck you. I live my dreams without your help.'

close enough?

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 05:39 AM

close enough?

Only if the two things existed in opposition to each other, which they don't - rather they are complementary approaches wherein the one thing informs the other with respect of parameters both musical and aesthetical. By adopting a more improvised approach to musical performance and recording the Feral Folk Musician aligns his/herself with Free Improvisation & other more Experimental musics, none of which would exclude Folk in quite the same way that Folk would exclude them. For example, in my performances of Free Improvisation I invariably sing a Traditional Ballad or two, but I would never Freely Improvise in a Folk Club because experience has taught me that the punters wouldn't get it.

Feral Folk might act as a bridge as far as the performer is concerned - certainly as far as this performer is concerned - seeking music in the wild / ancient / sacred places of the world with a few little flutes, bells, Black Sea Fiddle, a Zoom H4, an open ear and a fistful of Jew's Harps. The same day, however, they might fetch up in a folk club and turn in a couple of respectably conventional renderings of traditional songs - much as happened the day I recorded the feral Black Sea Fiddle improvisation linked to above; that very evening we paid a visit to The Joiners Arms in Bideford, where I played the self-same fiddle to accompany The Sheep Stealer and Butter and Cheese and All in the singaround, and jolly good fun was had by all.

Feral Folk is musical & personal liberation whereby the musician might slip away from the world a while, alone or with a few like minded souls, to commune with another level of possibility. It seldom works in terms of conventional performance of course, but that's not what it's about. It's about Experience Ritual, by which I might imply a non-proscriptive spirituality which occurs when one improvises on Medieval Plainsong Modes whilst absorbing the atmosphere of a beautiful medieval church - much as I do in the Launcells piece linked to above, the recording of which becomes somehow infused with both a dynamic impossible to reproduce in a studio and the genius loci which is, ultimately, what Feral Folk is about.

Feral would never say Fuck You; rather it says one day I was born, and some day I will die, and this is the day in which I am alive, and in this moment I am both here and now. It says take time out to get back to the fundamentals of what might make this music Folk in the first place; it says we love you, but you don't have to love us.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 06:26 AM

About Feral Folk
My name is Noreen O Shea from Tuosist near Kenmare, Co. Kerry, Ireland. I play traditional music in pubs in Kerry and west Cork. I have recently made a cd"The price of my pig" with Dean Moriarty (fiddle and mandolin) Sarah Roche (vocals and flute) Matt Griffin (guitars) and Tony Flatherty (bodhran). It will be available from end of april ..09. I also play with Gill Newlyn fiddle player and guitar player Chris Liddle and accordian and fiddle player John O Sullivan in Kenmare Co. Kerry. Gill teaches fiddle in Kenmare. (www.kerryfiddles.com.)I also play with concertina player and singer Dick Miles (www.dickmiles.com) and guitar player Dave King in west Cork (Feral Folk). Looking forward to a good year of playing music.
checkout feral folk on my space ,youwont regret it.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: glueman
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 07:04 AM

There is only feral folk music. Then there's the grumpy make-believe stuff, singalongabert, tankards at dawn, where two or three misanthropes are gathered together, and all that.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 07:22 AM

Then there's the grumpy make-believe stuff, singalongabert, tankards at dawn, where two or three misanthropes are gathered together, and all that.

Don't you just love it though? I've been defending this for more years than I care to remember but all the more so now because the only time I listen to Folk is in singarounds. I look upon it in a similar way to medieval churches and the carvings therein; though each carving might be of a type, they're a unique manifestation of that type, and altogether part & parcel of their particular habitat. Thus do I seek out singarounds in old back-rooms of old pubs, gatherings possessed of their own lore and history, as heady as any you might find in a church, replete with amazing singers you'd never hear otherwise. And so I bask content in the corporeal singularity of it all, and somewhere along the way, in that glad company, I'll catch a glimpse of what drew me into this music in the first place.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: glueman
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 08:48 AM

As a history of singarounds and pub function rooms grumpy music has a lot to recommend it. So long as people don't confuse the trappings with the folk there's nae bother.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 09:34 AM

Just gathered up a few of my thoughts from this thread into a blog for the sake of personal clarification & convenience. Read it HERE if you so wish.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 09:35 AM

"tankards at dawn, where two or three misanthropes are gathered together, and all that."

Knockholt was nice this Solstice. Almost feral I'd say. Bonfire. A couple of awld fellas, myself and a couple of friends, plus a rather endearingly utterly fecking trashed young couple. And the sun coming up. We did manage a few songs too. Though the quality was somewhat lacking... Gotta love the 'leavings' of the party.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 09:39 AM

Though the quality was somewhat lacking...

Feral Folk is leaving our critical faculties in some other place so we might better appreciate the vivid corporeal experience of being there, and doing it, and loving it regardless. The moment is all; the moment we share (as Robin Williamson once said) by dint of the sheer sharp excellence of being alive in the first place.

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 09:46 AM

I went to read your blog there - but it came up with an 'invalid friend' thingy...
Two utterly unrelated thoughts:

i) One thing I thinks gotta make feral properly feral - and that's trespassing? I do it on principle wherever I camp.

ii) Raves have to be the ultimate in feral folk music, no?

Being almost serious here...

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 10:09 AM

i) One thing I thinks gotta make feral properly feral - and that's trespassing? I do it on principle wherever I camp.

Absolutely; it also just happens, in it's own immediacy. It is not art, nor is it organised, it works on the principle that we are free to play where we like, when we like, without seeking permission to do so. We live in world where spontaneous creativity is strangled by so much red-tape and the petty guidelines of risk assessments, Health & Safety, etc. etc.   

ii) Raves have to be the ultimate in feral folk music, no?

An aspect of it anyway certainly, though my personal concern is with that level of behavioural compliance which I've always found pretty alienating to be honest; likewise the contributing noise levels, which I can't take on account of my hearing anyway. Either way, we take it where we find it.

The innate conservatism of Folk seems to exist regardless of the radical politics to which it invariably subscribes. Once or twice on Mudcat I've asked for a track only to be roundly censured for such criminal soliciting and told to go and buy the CD; even archive tracks from VOTP and The Kennedy Archive. And will I ever track down a copy of the original BBC version of Anthems in Eden reportedly wilder than the album version recorded the following year? These things interest me - bootlegs, sessions, all of which are invariably of greater musical value than the Official Product so beloved of folkies... mutter mutter...

Subject: RE: What is 'feral folk music'?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 26 Jun 09 - 10:50 AM

"We live in world where spontaneous creativity is strangled by so much red-tape and the petty guidelines of risk assessments, Health & Safety, etc. etc."

A good way out of your direction I know, but I reckon you might like the Kent, Knockholt Fest? It's all very easy going and pretty feral in principle: One massive bonfire and a big group of folkies around it doing their thing over several days. No paid acts.

A field up on a hill in lovely Kent countryside, camping only paid for (approx fiver a night per pitch), a nice pub down the road, and volunteers running all the portaloo/water/clearup etc. arrangements.

No H&S stuff, as they bypass it by charging only for the pitches. It was my first visit this Solstice, but quite taken with the thoroughly informal goodness and friendliness of the event.
Will probably drag my old man along this September.