Jill Karla Schwarz, 'Tam Lin', ''Fairies and Elves'', 1984
Source
I'm going to use this post as the perfect opportunity to direct you to my favorite song from the folk band Fairport Convention from their 1969 album 'Liege & Lief', Tam Lin (which, I'm sure, I've posted about at some point)
a folk song from chapayevka village, chornobyl region
this type of song is called голосіння (holosinnya — "keening"), and they are usually sang by women over the dead body during the period between death and funeral. in this song, the woman is mourning both her dead son, and the land that they were forced to leave due to the chornobyl disaster.
"Eighty-year-old Silvia Dan learnt her folk songs at her grandmother’s knee. Having spent her life caring for livestock on her smallholding in the Carpathian Mountains, she’s now starring on an album released in the UK.
Made by Romanian-born, Brighton-based artist Nico de Transilvania, the album – Interbeing – was recorded in the remote village of Nucsoara, where Dan is renowned for the pure beauty of her voice. A team of artists, videographers, photographers and musicians travelled to the village 180km north of Bucharest to record with Dan and local musicians on traditional Romanian flutes.
It is an area that is renowned for its old-growth forests which support lynx, wolves and bears, and is often described as the Amazon of Europe. Illegal logging has severely affected the region, so de Transilvania wanted to record the album as a way to use music to restore some of the damage. Every copy of the album sold will go towards planting native trees that are properly protected in law, in a project personally overseen by de Transilvania via her nonprofit Forests without Frontiers. So far the organisation has planted 150,000 trees over the last three years.
For Dan, whose grandmother wrote all her own folk songs, it feels right that they are now helping to restore the forests that inspired her.
“The album means a lot to me, it makes me proud that future generations will hear my ancestor’s songs – music and nature are embedded in our blood,” she said. “I am so happy that money raised will help to restore the landscape near my village – it has been devastating to see the destruction, and this project gives me hope.”"
Today's book includes text from an old English folk song with prints by Polly B. Johnson of the Press of the Unseen Unicorn in San Antonio, Texas entitled The Fox. The Fox is a traditional English folk song, the earliest versions of which are from the 15th century and written in Middle English. It is number 131 in the Roud Song Index. This song has also been used and modified throughout the modern age, and has been covered by popular musicians and groups from 1950s to today.
The story is about a fox that goes into a town to terrorize the people and animals living there, while also gathering food for his family living outside the town limits. As the fox goes back to his family, the children exclaim about how wonderful the food he has gathered from the town is, and request that he go back frequently for more exploits.
The Fox was printed with hand-set Masterman type using a Golding Pearl Letterpress on Teton Text Paper, except for the black paper, which is Canson Mi Teintes paper, in an edition of 50 copies. The prints were made using linoleum, wood, and torn chipboard. The cover is made of a rough woven cloth and includes a bone that was boiled, washed, and soaked in Clorox, and dipped in shellac. Our copy is another gift from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick.
View another book by Polly B. Johnson.
View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.
Did you notice how when you first listened to Torches it sounded so fun? And then when you listened again and paid attention to the lyrics you realized it was about hate and using your beliefs to push hateful rhetoric? And you were surprised because “but this song is so upbeat and fun and the chanting and call-and-response only adds to that”? Surely with that big community of voices surrounding the narrator what they’re singing about isn’t that bad? Like how in real life being surrounded by others who share the same beliefs as you and glorify their actions makes it easier to go along with things and be brainwashed? In this essay I will—
thinking about a ukrainian wedding folk song where a girl is upset that her mother can't visit her wedding and sends a nightingale with an invitation, and the mother responds with: "I would love to go / To my child, to my child / To give her a gift / But the soft weed had wrapped around my legs / So that I can't walk / The raw earth had layed upon my chest / So that I can't talk / The pine boards had trapped my feet / So that I can't get up"
I was told this a lot by my music teacher who was more then just a bit quirky because she believed if you stepped into a cats shadow that you’d see what a cat sees and a cat can see things that don’t wanna be seen. the same thing goes for looking into a cats eyes.
Ok, so I might start posting deep dives on folk/historical songs on monsters. I'm collecting them and want to share. If you know of any please hop in my ask box with them!!!
I'm sifting through what is out there. Might make a big ass source post, where songs get listed eventually???
Currently looking for folk songs about monsters (Examples: The Great Selkie, The Griesly Bride, The Queen of Elfan's Nourice) I'm trying to avoid ghosts for now. So shifters, monsters, unknowable entities, and international folk monsters are very welcome!