NETWIFM: Christmastime in the city
Dec. 22nd, 2005 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kniteracyNETWIFM: Christmastime in the city
(Not Exactly the Week in Folk Music)
Well, I’m happy to report that in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, with its huge and mixed immigrant population, Christmas is alive and well in London, and there doesn’t seem to be a war on it anywhere. This morning, as I stepped out to the bus stop near the house on the park, two people wished me a loud Happy Christmas from across the street. These are people who sometimes ride my bus, and I can’t identify their accents, but they don’t come from London, that’s for sure.
The difference in attitudes to Christmas in the folk music world have not gone unnoticed with me, because I can tell you that at some typical American folksong gatherings, it would be frowned upon to be overly Christmasy at this time of year, because Christmas in America stands for everything that is material. Even devout Christians don’t like the way Christmas comes across in the mall and on main street. Here, perhaps because London is such a teeming mix of backgrounds, culture, social strata, colour, language and race, the question of religion versus religion is handled with fewer blunt instruments in general, and just about everybody you see on the street seems to embrace Christmas in some way, shape or form (and not, thank the gods, very often by the utilisation of stupid blinking lights and electrical fires waiting to happen strung up all over the outsides of their homes). Folk clubs in London (or at least the two we visit regularly) are no exception.
Tuesday night at Sharps
First off, I should apologise for not writing a NETWIFM last week, when our Sharps was spiced up and made more delightful than usual by dinner with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deborah_c, who then accompanied us to the club. It was great having her with us, and I kept meaning to write about it, but I suppose other stuff, like my secret plans to take over the world, kept getting in the way. Anyway, on to this week.
Sharps was packed, for starters. It was the Christmas party, so admission was free, and Sheila organised a free raffle of various CDs she’d reviewed for Folk London over the past year. As always there were some lovely singers there. In fact, there were so many that the lady who was running the club this week barely got through the whole list before 11:00. I was very flattered to be one of two people asked to sing again when she was done. I spent the first part of the evening at Sharps sewing uppola_bear’s, um, bear. I knitted her a bear for her birthday, fitted out in a special Slytherclaw scarf. Don’t worry; I’ll talk more about him when I get to the knitting news for the week.
Anyway, Sharps was really nice! Barking Jerry made sandwiches for everyone, and Sheila brought little miniature mince pies, and the Twee Twins didn’t show up, and Sam sang “Game of all Fours,” and Jim Morrison was there and sang something he forgot several verses of but he was still entertaining. I’m worried about John, the music hall expert who often sits next to me: he hasn’t been around for two or three weeks, and he’s usually there like clockwork. His wife has been in hospital, and he’s not exactly young himself. I think of him now because someone else performed “Man on the Flying Trapeze” and it just wasn’t the same.
Gerry B sang “Give me those old Child Ballads,” which took me right back to either my first or second Gafilk, whenmsmilnr totally broke me during open filk when she sang that. She doubled up on choruses so I would stop laughing long enough to hear the next verse, it was so good. When everything was done, I offered to share “Green Fields of Scotland” with Gerry, and I think he will enjoy it very much. We had a lot of good singalongs, and I did something I’ve never done at Sharps before: I performed songs I’d written. I sang “Little Boy Blue” and “Lullabye for an Old Year.” Finbar, ordinarily sort of happy and Irish, was the official Downer of the Night, singing Stan Rogers’ doleful “First Christmas Away from Home” a capella and making everybody want to slit their wrists en masse. SAD much, dude?
There were two sets of parents with very small children there. One was a set we’d seen last week, with a son who loves to listen to music and is refreshingly calm in a loud room. Music seems to soothe him greatly. I wish I could be as sweet about the other kid, because I really liked talking to his mum after the club. He had serious trouble settling down, and neither parent wanted to take him out of the room, even for a minute. So rather than having a less-than-optimal experience themselves for a few minutes, they chose to let this kid make it difficult for all of us to hear various songs for an hour or two on end. David, whom I love to hear, and who has just this glorious tenor and is so self-effacing and shy while at the same time being gorgeous, sang “Matt Hyland” and I wanted so badly to hear the whole thing that I passedpola_bear’s newly-knitted bear to this kid in hopes he’d hush. It mostly worked. Unfortunately, after that the mum did something that really pissed me off. In order to calm the baby down, she gestured toward my harp, which was sitting on its back on the table, and ran her fingers along the strings without my permission, after which the babe became fascinated with the instrument and attempted to grab at it every chance he got, which meant I had to spend the rest of the night, at least until I gave up and physically moved the harp onto the bench beside me, watching this kid to make sure he wasn’t going to grab harpstrings. I’m very, very careful with small children around wire harps. First of all, small children don’t realise how strong their hands are, and when they pull a string, the word “gentle” doesn’t really come into it. Secondly, although I am very careful with wires wrapped around the thoughpins of the harp, occasionally an end sticks out, and puncturing yourself with a piece of brass wire hurts; trust me on this. She was from Virginia, so I was kind to her afterwards. If I hadn’t been in a fairly good mood, she might have gotten an icily polite earful about how I’d really prefer to be asked before people finger my bread and butter like that.
So as not to end this report on a downer, I should tell you that about three-quarters of the way through the night, a fellow called Andy slipped into the seat behind me and asked if I’d sung yet. I said that yes, I had, and he was all kinds of bummed, saying he’d really like to hear me and how much he enjoyed the harp and my singing and stuff. It was downright embarrassing. Then, when I got tapped to sing again, he was so happy! It was great. I really like that people enjoy hearing me and get something out of it for themselves, because it is just the best thing on earth, I’m learning, to be appreciated for who you really are and what you really do. What an amazing life.
Wednesday night at Folkmob
Well, I was tired. I was kind of in a bad mood. But going to the Tudor Barn always makes me feel a little better, if not for the fabulous quality of the music for the deeply friendly people who hang out there. Folkmob is just a nice place to be. I had way too much fish and chips, J came along late with the harp, and that fellow who’s part of the duo whose harmonies I’m always praising but whose name I can never remember did a couple of John Prine songs (“Christmas in Prison” and “Speed of the sound of Loneliness”). Theresa the Very Serious Folkie did an appropriately angry version of "Diamonds and Rust," plus her very nice "Matty Groves," which I actually asked her to sing because I was in the mood to hear it. There was a lady there whom I hadn’t met before who is apparently just back from Finland; she sang some lovely things. We had the Sea Chanty Guy, whose name I can’t remember (I should really get better at this), and everyone was disappointed that we hadn’t made it to the Christmas party on December 9th. But it was just two days after my gig and I was feeling terrible about the mistakes at the end, so I said I didn’t feel like going and we didn’t go. Micky isn’t feeling well, which was no fun. There was a teddy bear in the raffle, which I didn’t win (I never win!), and I got quite a lot done onmuseinred’s socks; by the end of the night I was at gusset point and had put gusset markers in. The band Elusive Teeth did the last half hour; they were OK. I’ve seen them before at Eltham; they’re good technicians, but it’s not really my kind of music. We got two Christmas cards from sweet people, and I was informed that I’d won an award for best new instrument, which made me feel happy and sad at the same time-- all guilty for not having gone to the Christmas party and happy that they thought of me. I read “The Shortest Day” and sang “Lullabye for an Old Year,” and the feedback on the harp was worse than usual. I have to figure out how to explain micing this instrument to these guys: I know feedback is almost never the musician’s fault, but I feel bad when people can’t hear properly. Mike Porter sang some nice things, and two guys played children’s tv show themes that I had never heard before, since I didn’t grow up in this country. We missed our train on the way home and had to take the bus, but it was all right. We were exhausted when we got home, but that’s nothing new.
And that’s not exactly the week in folk music, but it’s what happened to me.
(Not Exactly the Week in Folk Music)
Well, I’m happy to report that in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, with its huge and mixed immigrant population, Christmas is alive and well in London, and there doesn’t seem to be a war on it anywhere. This morning, as I stepped out to the bus stop near the house on the park, two people wished me a loud Happy Christmas from across the street. These are people who sometimes ride my bus, and I can’t identify their accents, but they don’t come from London, that’s for sure.
The difference in attitudes to Christmas in the folk music world have not gone unnoticed with me, because I can tell you that at some typical American folksong gatherings, it would be frowned upon to be overly Christmasy at this time of year, because Christmas in America stands for everything that is material. Even devout Christians don’t like the way Christmas comes across in the mall and on main street. Here, perhaps because London is such a teeming mix of backgrounds, culture, social strata, colour, language and race, the question of religion versus religion is handled with fewer blunt instruments in general, and just about everybody you see on the street seems to embrace Christmas in some way, shape or form (and not, thank the gods, very often by the utilisation of stupid blinking lights and electrical fires waiting to happen strung up all over the outsides of their homes). Folk clubs in London (or at least the two we visit regularly) are no exception.
Tuesday night at Sharps
First off, I should apologise for not writing a NETWIFM last week, when our Sharps was spiced up and made more delightful than usual by dinner with
deborah_c, who then accompanied us to the club. It was great having her with us, and I kept meaning to write about it, but I suppose other stuff, like my secret plans to take over the world, kept getting in the way. Anyway, on to this week.Sharps was packed, for starters. It was the Christmas party, so admission was free, and Sheila organised a free raffle of various CDs she’d reviewed for Folk London over the past year. As always there were some lovely singers there. In fact, there were so many that the lady who was running the club this week barely got through the whole list before 11:00. I was very flattered to be one of two people asked to sing again when she was done. I spent the first part of the evening at Sharps sewing up
pola_bear’s, um, bear. I knitted her a bear for her birthday, fitted out in a special Slytherclaw scarf. Don’t worry; I’ll talk more about him when I get to the knitting news for the week. Anyway, Sharps was really nice! Barking Jerry made sandwiches for everyone, and Sheila brought little miniature mince pies, and the Twee Twins didn’t show up, and Sam sang “Game of all Fours,” and Jim Morrison was there and sang something he forgot several verses of but he was still entertaining. I’m worried about John, the music hall expert who often sits next to me: he hasn’t been around for two or three weeks, and he’s usually there like clockwork. His wife has been in hospital, and he’s not exactly young himself. I think of him now because someone else performed “Man on the Flying Trapeze” and it just wasn’t the same.
Gerry B sang “Give me those old Child Ballads,” which took me right back to either my first or second Gafilk, when
msmilnr totally broke me during open filk when she sang that. She doubled up on choruses so I would stop laughing long enough to hear the next verse, it was so good. When everything was done, I offered to share “Green Fields of Scotland” with Gerry, and I think he will enjoy it very much. We had a lot of good singalongs, and I did something I’ve never done at Sharps before: I performed songs I’d written. I sang “Little Boy Blue” and “Lullabye for an Old Year.” Finbar, ordinarily sort of happy and Irish, was the official Downer of the Night, singing Stan Rogers’ doleful “First Christmas Away from Home” a capella and making everybody want to slit their wrists en masse. SAD much, dude?There were two sets of parents with very small children there. One was a set we’d seen last week, with a son who loves to listen to music and is refreshingly calm in a loud room. Music seems to soothe him greatly. I wish I could be as sweet about the other kid, because I really liked talking to his mum after the club. He had serious trouble settling down, and neither parent wanted to take him out of the room, even for a minute. So rather than having a less-than-optimal experience themselves for a few minutes, they chose to let this kid make it difficult for all of us to hear various songs for an hour or two on end. David, whom I love to hear, and who has just this glorious tenor and is so self-effacing and shy while at the same time being gorgeous, sang “Matt Hyland” and I wanted so badly to hear the whole thing that I passed
pola_bear’s newly-knitted bear to this kid in hopes he’d hush. It mostly worked. Unfortunately, after that the mum did something that really pissed me off. In order to calm the baby down, she gestured toward my harp, which was sitting on its back on the table, and ran her fingers along the strings without my permission, after which the babe became fascinated with the instrument and attempted to grab at it every chance he got, which meant I had to spend the rest of the night, at least until I gave up and physically moved the harp onto the bench beside me, watching this kid to make sure he wasn’t going to grab harpstrings. I’m very, very careful with small children around wire harps. First of all, small children don’t realise how strong their hands are, and when they pull a string, the word “gentle” doesn’t really come into it. Secondly, although I am very careful with wires wrapped around the thoughpins of the harp, occasionally an end sticks out, and puncturing yourself with a piece of brass wire hurts; trust me on this. She was from Virginia, so I was kind to her afterwards. If I hadn’t been in a fairly good mood, she might have gotten an icily polite earful about how I’d really prefer to be asked before people finger my bread and butter like that.So as not to end this report on a downer, I should tell you that about three-quarters of the way through the night, a fellow called Andy slipped into the seat behind me and asked if I’d sung yet. I said that yes, I had, and he was all kinds of bummed, saying he’d really like to hear me and how much he enjoyed the harp and my singing and stuff. It was downright embarrassing. Then, when I got tapped to sing again, he was so happy! It was great. I really like that people enjoy hearing me and get something out of it for themselves, because it is just the best thing on earth, I’m learning, to be appreciated for who you really are and what you really do. What an amazing life.
Wednesday night at Folkmob
Well, I was tired. I was kind of in a bad mood. But going to the Tudor Barn always makes me feel a little better, if not for the fabulous quality of the music for the deeply friendly people who hang out there. Folkmob is just a nice place to be. I had way too much fish and chips, J came along late with the harp, and that fellow who’s part of the duo whose harmonies I’m always praising but whose name I can never remember did a couple of John Prine songs (“Christmas in Prison” and “Speed of the sound of Loneliness”). Theresa the Very Serious Folkie did an appropriately angry version of "Diamonds and Rust," plus her very nice "Matty Groves," which I actually asked her to sing because I was in the mood to hear it. There was a lady there whom I hadn’t met before who is apparently just back from Finland; she sang some lovely things. We had the Sea Chanty Guy, whose name I can’t remember (I should really get better at this), and everyone was disappointed that we hadn’t made it to the Christmas party on December 9th. But it was just two days after my gig and I was feeling terrible about the mistakes at the end, so I said I didn’t feel like going and we didn’t go. Micky isn’t feeling well, which was no fun. There was a teddy bear in the raffle, which I didn’t win (I never win!), and I got quite a lot done on
museinred’s socks; by the end of the night I was at gusset point and had put gusset markers in. The band Elusive Teeth did the last half hour; they were OK. I’ve seen them before at Eltham; they’re good technicians, but it’s not really my kind of music. We got two Christmas cards from sweet people, and I was informed that I’d won an award for best new instrument, which made me feel happy and sad at the same time-- all guilty for not having gone to the Christmas party and happy that they thought of me. I read “The Shortest Day” and sang “Lullabye for an Old Year,” and the feedback on the harp was worse than usual. I have to figure out how to explain micing this instrument to these guys: I know feedback is almost never the musician’s fault, but I feel bad when people can’t hear properly. Mike Porter sang some nice things, and two guys played children’s tv show themes that I had never heard before, since I didn’t grow up in this country. We missed our train on the way home and had to take the bus, but it was all right. We were exhausted when we got home, but that’s nothing new.And that’s not exactly the week in folk music, but it’s what happened to me.
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Custom and practice
Date: 2005-12-22 04:00 pm (UTC)I think folkie-type people here are more inclined to make much of Yuletide, possibly because of their higher-than-average awareness of history and custom. One only has to think back to the Commonwealth under Cromwell, then celebration of Christmas was banned as a papist and idolatrous thing... So, I think custom and practice is inclined to exalt dancing, feasting and all the rest of it - let religious purity go hang and Drive the Cold Winter Away. Of course, there was also a time when many folk only had one guaranteed day off: the 25th of December, as another folk song had it "the poor have only Christmas".
I saw these and thought of you.....
Date: 2005-12-22 04:03 pm (UTC)Teddy
(if I'd waited for a knitting post to mention this, I'd have forgotten to do it...{g})
no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 04:20 pm (UTC)However, alas, it is getting more common. Worse yet, we are currently failing to convince Alex that such houses are "hideous"...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 04:37 pm (UTC)1) fairly restrained and a little twinkly
or
2) outrageous and right over the top in the "oh my Gawd, how could they?" manner.
I like twinkly.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 04:33 pm (UTC)Glad you had a mostly good time. My children are taught to *always* ask before they touch anyone's instruments, including ours. (They can touch their own whenever they want). I try very hard to enforce this and even when musicians say "Oh sure, go ahead!" I always tell them to ask first. It's partly a "respect the instruments" thing as well as respecting the musicians.
And add me to the list of people who love to hear you sing and play. Ed made sure to put some of your songs in our "morning, evening and soothing" mixes so we could cheer up and think of you.
Hugs
no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 05:45 pm (UTC)I never forget one filkcon when I left the harp in a room adjacent to the dealers room. Went away to get a drink, had a conversation for a while, came back and found that someone I'd never met had picked it up and was playing random notes on it. Roughly enough to knock it out of tune, too.
GRRRRR!
I'd *never* pick up someone else's guitar, or flute, or dulcimer or whatever!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 05:46 pm (UTC)"What's the problem then?" he asks
Spluttering, I reply that touching anyone's instrument without asking is not only rude, but potentially dangerous.
He looked at me with one of those looks.
I asked him if he'd be happy for a stranger to pick up his concertina and attempt to play it without permission?
"But they didn't play it ~ that person only touched a couple of strings" quoth he. "It is like someone thumbing down on one of my guitars or touching a couple of buttons on my 'tina ~ nothing can happen and it wasn't moved or picked up."
Now, rather than resorting to argument status (which was sorely tempting) I decided to think about this. Yes, he is techincally correct but I am of the opinion that any person touching a harp (or any other instrument for that matter) without consent is rude and invading personal space. I have had it happen on occassion, and it never fails to amaze me just how non-musical people have the gall to do this. I wonder if we could, in return begin to look through their handbag/briefcase/mobile phone . . . ?
BTW anyone want a second~hand husband? Only slightly bruised . .. . . . . ;)
Do not touch personal bits
Date: 2005-12-22 08:02 pm (UTC)Sword
Harp
Cod-piece.
I'd always assumed that the same applied to other musical instruments, but judging from that, maybe not?
Re: Do not touch personal bits
Date: 2005-12-23 12:01 am (UTC)I think part of the problem is that people who don't play the instruments often don't realize a) how expensive they are or b) how easy it can be to knock them out of tune and how much work that means for the performer to get them back in tune.
Re: Do not touch personal bits
Date: 2005-12-23 07:03 am (UTC)I don't feel the same way about the various tin whistles and so on around the place, possibly because they're less subject to damage, but mainly becasue I don't "cuddle" them, they're just tools. Though considering the mouth contact required to play, and consequent sharing of bodily fluids, logically I should be a lot more worried about people "having a go"?
no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 06:43 pm (UTC)I'm glad I don't live opposite one of the houses in the next street -- not only more light wattage than I have in the whole house but flashing continuously. /They/ don't have to look at it...
Happy Christmas!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 08:50 pm (UTC)Best/tackiest Christmas display in my neighborhood? An inflated snow-globe with Santa inside, internally lighted, of course, with a fan blowing the fake snow around and around inside the globe while outside, here in Wisconsin, the real snow blows around. One scarcely knows what to say.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-23 12:42 am (UTC)They had those on sale in Wallmart when we were over there in September but
no subject
Date: 2005-12-23 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-23 04:22 am (UTC)Bringing a fussy baby to a musical performance (unless you can honestly say you thought it would be quiet and you immediately leave again when it starts fussing) is no more forgiveable than tuning your bagpipes during the same performance. The selfish rudeness of some parents today just flabbergasts me.