Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..

Subject: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: skarpi
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 09:26 AM

Halló all , a few months ago I was asked about folkmass in our church, so i said that I would thing about it and I was asked again
few days so have anyone done this? , can you help me?
What should I use ? anyone. Do you use the Bible? or do we have something else?.
All the best Skarpi Iceland.

P.s I was talking about the winter here in Iceland last week,
Now it´s summer again the heat is about 15 on Celsius so
what happens to my trees? it is not good. I wish it could winter when it should be.

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Dani
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 09:43 AM

Can you be more specific?

What denomination are you talking about?


When I was a teen, our Catholic church had a "folk" group, and a "folk" mass every Saturday night. It's probably the only reason I hung around in the Catholic church as long as I did!

I guess what was folk-y about it was that the music was appealing to a younger crowd. It involved drums, guitars, stuff that wasn't usually heard in church. Some of it was downright rock!

I could point you to or send you some of the music we used, but not in a few days!

Or are you thinking of just involving popular music and arrangements into the traditional service?


Dani

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 10:13 AM

Here's one definition of it, Skarpi, specific to the Catholic Church: A Mass in which folk music is used as part of the service instead of liturgical music. Folk Masses came into being during the 60's and 70's.

Also, one place I found said they rely heavily on the music of Taize, but when I went to their index and looked at their list of music, I didn't see a lot of what I'd consider folk music. I may have missed something, though.

Good luck!

Ast,

kat

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 10:22 AM

I know the a lot of people in the Episcopal church seems to consider Taize to be "folk" - though I agree with kat - it doesn't seem "folkie" to me. There are a lot of hymns and psalms though that when you strip them down to bare melodies are "folk" in origin. I remember complimenting our organist one time on her rendition of 'Star of the County Down' - and she was amazed - because the music she was playing from claimed it as a musical setting of the 23rd psalm. (we compared the music a bit later - and she agreed - the composer used 'county down' as melody.)

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: wysiwyg
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 10:30 AM

... and do you want the Mass itself sung, or are you talking about an informal Mass with folk music?

I can't help you with a sung folk mass, but we have a weekly informal service (Episcopal Church-- Anglican) and the Mass itself is just a shortened form from our Book of Common Prayer.

The format (I think I have the order right):
> opening song gathering people to worship, usually upbeat
> an invocation of light (it's an evening service)
> a song introducing the Gospel reading, usually short and serious
> The reading of the Gospel lesson for the week
> the sermon
> the prayers of the people: for the church, the world, all people, and people on our prayer list
> confession
> exchanging the peace
> announcements
> an offertory song while the offering is taken and the altar prepared, usually something intensely personal and moving, beautiful
> Communion (we play an instrumental during this)
> concluding blessing
> closing song (usually a rousing stomper)


My husband is the priest, so we do the planning together. We've been doing this for about five years, every week, and now I also play for another church too small to pay an organist.

Someone has to be responsible for being the songleader. It's a very different job from performing a song. I had to learn how to do that.   (I still am.)

We started with just autoharp and songleader (me) and then added another singer and a tenor banjo player. (We didn't have anyone else available.) By now we have added a guitar and a fiddle, sometimes a 5-string banjo. We have a man who helps with the songleading now. It's not good to always have just one voice.

When we began, I told the people I had never perfomred before and God would be helping us all figure out how to do this. They like it that we do not try to be prefect. They are very curious each week, still, what new things we will be trying. When we find a song that really works, we use it again. But they will try anything we put out for them to sing.

Our music varies. We use a tiny amount of contemporary praise music, and lots of these:
> Black gospel
> Blues Gospel
> Southern (US) gospel based on gospel quartets
> Negro spirituals from slavery times
> Bluegrass Gospel
> Oldtime gospel (Carter Family and others)
> Revival Hymns
> Oldfashioned (1800's) hymns from various Protestant denominations

We have a lady who does it as a prayer service, no communion, when my husband and I are on vacation. She uses music from Taize, a capella.

To do this, I listen to all the music I can, and learn and arrange the ones I think are singable and that we can actually do with the instruments we have. This meant, at the start, buying lots of recordings and songbooks.... we presented four new songs each week, which is a lot of music to learn and lead. Now I get most of my music from online collections of rare recordings, and the Cyberhymnal. We have accumulated hundreds of good songs, making songsheets and players' arrangements as we went.

Is this helpful? Would you like a copy of our songbook? I can make you a CD with some of the recordings we listened to, for this group of about 100 songs.... we don't do them exactly the same way we heard them, so the arrangements are not an exact match, but it could help you catch the sound to make them your own. If your church can pay for the postage expenses, I can send you more, as we go. Nowadays we introduce about 4-6 new pieces each month, using our songbook the rest of the time. We also have some little leaflets, each one containing four songs, and the players' copies. Some of it is poorly xeroxed, but I am redoing all those at the moment.

Mudcatter Charcloth was asked to start a contemporary-music service at his church and I sent him all our contemporary praise music because we were not using it. He's not here at Mudcat much now, but I think I could email him if you would like to see if he could share some of that with you. In that system, the company you buy your songbooks from has recordings so you can hear the music, players' arrangments, and either printed songbooks or a CD with the text so you can make your own songsheets. Some churches use an overhead projector instead of songsheets.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: vectis
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 10:37 AM

I still have my old folk mass hymns, music for some of them and chords for most of them. If you let me know which part of the mass you need the song for I can probably give you some suitable stuff.

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Mooh
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 12:55 PM

Skarpi...If you like I can send you an Anglican Folk Mass which my father wrote (and was used in a couple of parishes), and some other possibilities from my collection. PM me for the exchange if you're interested. Otherwise, have you checked out some of the online hymnals for possibilities? There is related liturgical stuff on some of them.

Good luck.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 01:27 PM

It always seems to me that traditional Masses with traditional hymns were often genuinely "folk", in a way that "folk masses" virtually never are.

Much of the time the term tends to just mean a couple of strumming guitars and the occasional tambourine and remorselessly cheerful songs. But it doesn't have to be that way.

They do these things much better in Latin America I believe. One of the few hymns within the folk mass repertoire that can raise the hairs on your neck is the Peruvian Gloria. ("Glory to God x 3, Glory to the Father etc)

Obviously Taizé isn't folk music in its origins, but then nor is virtually all the music that gets used in this context. In its feeling I think Taizé has a far closer sense of tradition than most, and it gets through to a very wide range of people in a powerful way. Its the difference between chantband song whuc has come uop in another thread recently in a slightly different (buit not unrelated) context.

Subject: Church Music
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 03:37 PM

Hi, Skarpi - I suppose in its original meaning, "folk mass" or "guitar mass" refers to the music that became popular in the Roman Catholic Church in English-speaking countries in the late 1960's, after the Mass was translated from Latin to English. Most of the songs were freshly-written three-chord songs similar to the music of the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary - they were not folk music, in most cases - but many of the songs were at least what you might call "catchy," which may or may not have been an improvement over the heavy anthems and Gregorian chant of the 1940's and 1950's (generally sung at a dirge cadence). The first successful U.S. publisher of "folk Mass" music was F.E.L. Publications of Chicago (FEL= Friends of the English Liturgy), which published the hugely successful Hymnal for Young Christians. the hymnal has mysic by Ray Repp (Clap Your Hands, Allelu), James Thiem (Sons of God), and some other well-intentioned nuns and priests and seminarians. Catholic parishes made up mimeographed booklets of "folk Mass" songs by the hundreds of thousands, to be used as supplements to traditional hymnals. FEL filed lawsuits against a number of Catholic parishes and dioceses for copyright infringement, and won some big settlements. The churches paid the settlements, and stopped buying FEL hymnals.

Many of the "folk Mass" choirs added religious lyrics to pop songs, and the score from the musical play Godspell was popular in many churches. In the 1970's, folk choirs added drums and electric guitars to keep up with the times, and some choirs dressed in matching polyester outfits with the men wearing bell bottom pants and long sideburns.

N.A.L.R. (North American Liturgy Resources - pronounced "nailer") of Phoenix, Arizona, became the next successful "folk Mass" publisher, with its Glory and Praise hymnals that had music from the St. Louis Jesuits and former Rev. Cary Landry.

An old Catholic music publisher, the Gregorian Institute of America, became GIA Publications. The Catholic Truth Society of Oregon became Oregon Catholic Press, and later OCP Publications. OCP bought out NALR, and the FEL songs went to various publishers. I think the name changes allowed these two publishers to appeal to a broader market. the Roman Catholic Church doesn't publish hymnals, but many Protestant churches do - and many of them include songs from GIA and OCP.

While the Catholic and "mainstream" churches brought in new music from 1960's pop-folk music, the "evangelical" or "born-again" churches brought in "praise music" from the pop-country style of music of the 1980's. In my opinion, all of this resulted in a lot of bad music - and a few very good songs and a number of reasonably acceptable songs.

I think that a number of the "mainstream" churches have found "folk Mass" music tiresome, and there has been a movement away from it to a more eclectic mix. "Praise music" is a bit newer, and is just beginning to wane in popularity. I think that has always been the case with all music. Most songs are popular for only a brief time, and only the best of them remain after a few years.

Skarpi - if you're going to do a "folk Mass," be careful. There's a lot of bad music out there - but a lot of good stuff, too. Good luck.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: skarpi
Date: 06 Nov 03 - 05:13 PM

Halló all and thank you all for your adds.
I will look into all this and Joe we will be careful when we
look into the songs and the hymns.
We want to do this right and well and we will try to use as many
istrument as we can.
The man who play the organ( the organist) he will be with us and he is from England so he might know something? Maybe.
All the best from Skarpi Iceland.

Again thank you all for your help.

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Fortunato
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 02:26 PM

WYSIWYG,

Covered it quite well. But, Skarpi, I'll add that I was invited to play at folkmasses at the National Cathedral (Episcopal)here in DC in the early 80's and I recall them being less structured than WYSIWYG's, description, more like folk music placed where choir and organ would be in a Protestant service, and less like a 'Mass'.

cheers, Chance

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: wysiwyg
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 02:36 PM

Chance-- what we do is unlike anything else I'm aware of-- not a folk mass at all as I understand them to be. IMO, better! :~)

~S~

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Folkiedave
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 03:30 PM

Sheffield City Morris have been to a number of folk dance festivals abroad and many have had a "folk mass" as part of the festival.

These have taken many forms but each group attending can perform part of their "religious/semi-religious" repertoire if they so wish. We usually sing one of the "Sheffield" carols because they have nice harmonies and we can sing them fairly confidently.

Other groups have set off fireworks the size of small mortar bombs (a Guatemalan group in France to clear the devils out of the way); played tunes (which we have also done - we played the tune written for the Pope's visit to Ireland), and so on. We have danced (farandole type dance with representatives from each group playing in the band) and had sermons with universal appeals for peace - speeches of Mandela and Martin Luther-King, and we have taken bread and wine in Hungary at the end of a service.

I do hope this helps to give you some more ideas.

Regards,

Dave
www.collectorsfolk.co.uk

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 03:39 PM

WYSIWYG and Hardi put together and pull off a service that is what a "folk mass" *should* be...but so frequently isn't.

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Dani
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 03:53 PM

Raise your hand if you can sing ANY St. Louis Jesuits tune off the top of your head RIGHT NOW!

Dani (with her hand in the air)

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 04:07 PM

In the 1970's the Lutherans around my area had a Chicago Folk Service, which I think borrowed heavily from the Catholic's folk mass. It was conducted with the pastor doing what he usually did, but we would sit with our guitars and lead the congregation with the hymns. We had to have someone explain that Lord of the Dance was using the term dance figuratively, not literally. I recall a really bad re-write of Blowing in the Wind (the answer my friend is living in all men).

My fellow guitar players complained about my trying to finger pick the accompanyment (why can't you play like the rest of us), which probably had a lot to do with why I'm a lapsed Lutheran today. After my batch of Luther League compatriots went off to college, the folk service stopped due to lack of interest from the next batch of high school kids.

The father of one of the other guitarists was wondering about whether there was a communist influence in the youth group. The pastor had looked through one of my reprints from Sing out and printed What a friend we have in Hoover (by Tom Paxton) in the Luther league song book. She told him that was one of my selections. Years later I was told that if the girl's father had appeared a bit distant when I was around, that was probably why.

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 04:29 PM

I know very little about the mass as I was raised presb. but some may find this of interest.
Celtic guitarist/composer Scott MacMillan composed a Celtic Mass For The Sea. Sorry I can't get those blue clickies to work but RealAudio sound files can be found here:
www.scottmacmillan.ca/albums/mass.html
             Sandy

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 07:01 PM

At the Folk Mass in my church (Catholic) it's standard liturgy, often with standard songs. However, the arrangements are completely different. We once had someone lilt the psalm- gave the place chills.

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: PapaWhiskey
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 09:14 PM

Here's what I did in a similar situation.

Like most good protestant boys, one my jobs in college was playing guitar for Roman Catholic mass at their student center chapel. We did 8:00 mass with "folk" music. The nun that directed the choir had some folk mass music, but most of it was really bad. I borrowed a hymnal from the Baptist student center down the street. It had lots of good music, a topic index to help the sister select appropriate music, and the music was new to most of the parishioners. We used it for years; I don't know if the Baptists ever got it back.

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: wysiwyg
Date: 07 Nov 03 - 11:05 PM

The main thing is, find worship music that is the music you love, and damn the "organized" praise or folk mass books.... serve it fresh, not out of someone else's can. And keep involving new people so it will continue after you're done leading it....

~Susan

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Nov 03 - 03:36 AM

On the other hand, it's not a bad idea to use a hymnal, if you can find one you like. I really like an Episcopalian on, Lift Every Voice and Sing II: An African American Hymnal, published by Church Publishing, Inc., New York (1993). It's available at Amazon for $15.95 US - you should be able to order from Amazon, can't you, Skarpi? It's a wonderful collection of songs.
The Methodists published something similar, Songs fo Zion about a decade earlier - but I think the Episcopalian one is better.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: Abuwood
Date: 08 Nov 03 - 03:52 AM

If you are using guitars in Church why not use music written by a guitarist? Graham Kendrick has some wonderful songs, usually based on bible verses Servant King being my favourite. Taize songs are great too, but never the same in a church as they are in Taize itslf. Anyone can go,any age, its great to sing in a variety of languages with the wider Family..
Sacred Harp, or South Yorkshire carol style is good too, but rather rowdy for a reflective service I think.
We sand Turn, Turn Turn at a Hungarian wedding so it does show that anything goes...

Subject: RE: Skarpi needs help , about folkmass..
From: skarpi
Date: 08 Nov 03 - 04:35 PM

Halló all , I can see that many people have heard and been in a
Folk mass and that is good becouse this will help us a lot,
Joe I will try to get this music on Amason I can do that.

One member in my band said , we can sing amasing grace with
Icelandic lyric and we can it is very good one , but I think we have have some hymns as well.

Sandy , I will go on this webside and look , I live by the sea
and there are lot of fisherman here in my hometown after all
it is ferrytown to Vestmannaisland.

I think it is time to go to work and get something done
so we can do this mass.

All the best Skarpi Iceland.