Towersey Village Folk Festival

[helenic]

"August Bank Holiday, just past, was Towersey Festival weekend, the quiddity of English folk festivals, where Morris sides from all over England rub shoulders with musicians of every age and gender, with fiddlers, story-tellers, Cossack dancers, ceilidh bands and players of every variety of portable instrument. It's a visual feast too, with banners and ribbons and gaudy stalls, as the festival-goers, stall-holders and performers compete to outdo each other in their symphonies and concatenations of colour and flamboyance. It's a weekend of roots in more than one sense: in forty years the songs affirming life and protesting against injustice have continued to raise the spirits, while governments, ignored or despised, have come and gone, their petty machinations or abominated alliances simply grist to the musical mill, the inexorable grindstone of history."
Wood Avens, 31/08/05, uk.religion.pagan

I thrive on music festivals. I'd hesitate to say I need them, but they contribute hugely to my general happiness. A weekend of musical festival can clear out half a year of angst. Last year I had two; one folk, one power metal, and about as different from one another as you might imagine. They both gave me the energy boost, the emotional clarification and relaxation, the uplift, but it was the folk festival that really did it. I went to The Big Session in June this year, which although a folk festival was a small one in the city I grew up in, and I stayed with my parents rather than camping, so it only had half the sense of freedom. The camp I went on with various of uk.religion.pagan filled in that half, but there was no music. So I'd been waiting for Towersey. I did kind of need it, after the office job and the funding stress and the unemployment and the rain. I needed it to get summer back.

Going with romauld made it especially nice. I was a little worried that he would steal all my attention away from the other festivalness, but it was fine, and although he'd never done the festival thing before he took to it like, um - well, like a beardy gothy larper mead-drinking folk musician to a folk festival.

Towersey festival, if not the village, is much bigger than Trowbridge. (Towersey festival was actually the first one I've seen to include the village as well as the surrounding fields.) Although it had several large stages and a number of really big acts playing, the gigs were only a part of it. Trowbridge was basically one long gig from midday to midnight every day, with loads of bands you'd heard of and loads of bands you hadn't, and it was amazing. Towersey, on the other hand, not only had concerts every lunchtime and evening, but also nonstop ceilidhs in two different parts of the festival, one jazz/hip-hop folk with African drumming, and one Irish. It had at least two official sessions running at any one time, and uncounted numbers of informal ones cropping up all over the festival and campsite, particularly outside the beer tent. On the Sunday, fluffymark and romauld and I ended up missing the concert and ceilidh we'd been heading for and wound up in the beer tent, where there was an enormous session taking place. There were no less than about fifty people taking part, most of them young, and they were playing a tune I knew at a speed I could play it, so I perched on the edge of one of the picnic benches, got my whistle out, and joined in. I barely stopped for the next half hour. I found out later it was the "Slow and Steady" session designed to give beginners a forum where they could learn tunes by ear in a context where it sounded good, and I'm not that great on the whistle and I don't know many tunes, so it was a huge pleasure to find it and a massive confidence boost.

And there were morris dances, open mike sessions, workshops for voice and dance, storytelling and yoga, clogging, rapper and longsword dancing, world music, lantern making; folk clubs, under-25 sessions and workshops (and the thing about folk festivals is that the under 25s and even the under 10s are far, far better musicians than I ever normally encounter in real life) as well as the normal proliferation of stalls, fairground, craft fairs, clowns, childrens' centres, music tents. The programme was 95 pages long.

I arrived on Thursday afternoon, meeting smhwpf at the train station in Haddenham and Thame and sharing a taxi to Towersey. I'd spent the afternoon carrying blackmetalbaz's camping rucksack, ludicrously over-full with a bodhran strapped to the back and a saxaphone (you'd be surprised how heavy the damn things are) in one hand, so when I arrived it was very nice not to have to pitch a tent. I was sharing mirabehn and evil_nick's the first night until romauld arrived with tent the next day. We cooked dinner and explored the festival stalls (I have a peculiar love of festival stalls, they make me happy) after collecting our wristbands, trying to ignore the warblings of Rolf Harris drifting over to us from the Arena. I bought a thing to cover my hair and a large, cuddly black hoodie lined with fleece and with enormous pockets and zips. It is extremely snug. Later on the four of us huddled into Elly and Nick's tent and smhwpf told us about the work he'd been doing in Palestine, and we passed a bottle of Glenlivet around and got extremely drunk and gossipy and confessional. I don't even remember going to bed, just waking up simultaneously with mirabehn at about 5am and having anothing longish and random conversation. We were also forced to snuggle lots in order to escape dying of cold. mirabehn and evil_nick both snuggle very well.

Friday was Elly's birthday, and quite gentle. We put sun tan lotion on each other and Elly and I sang lots of songs including several things by the Silly Sisters, and realised that our voices worked surprisingly well together in close harmony. Our Blood and Gold was almost a passable approximation of June Tabor and Maddy Prior. However Elly, whose voice is much darker than mine, was singing Maddy's part rather than June's, which gave it an interesting effect. We played some tunes and the "casting the movie of our lives, or fictional characters as other fictional characters" game until it became too laughable, and curled a little and wandered round the stalls again, and went to a ceilidh in the afternoon.

The stalls were the usual selection of hippy clothes for the most part, but there were some fantastic exceptions. There was a fairy shop that sold wings and tutus and pink glittery things (including lesbian cowgirl hats) and packets of "fairy poo" which appeared to be yoghurt-coated raisins covered in glitter. There was an ironwrought, handmade garden ornaments stall with some wonderful abstract pieces, including fountains, lanterns, firebaskets and candlesticks, gates and bowers and random beautiful foliate spiralling constructions. There was a jumblesale and a craft fair, with a rather fabulous selection of homemade wines and liqueurs of such stuff as crabapple and elderberry and plum, as well as some lovely pottery and jewellery. I bought Elly a bronze necklace with purple and blue beads and Sanskrit engraved on it. There were more than the usual number of images of pagan deities, including some rather nice Green Men and some sun faces, although the moons weren't as nice. There was a fresh bakery, a stall selling every kind of olive, fresh herbs (the actual kitchen kind, in pots!) and an enormous marquee of musical instruments and sheet music. Sam gave Elly a beautiful, vaguely Hellenic reversible theatre mask in pale carved wood and Nick bought her some trousers of many colours. fluffymark and romauld arrived one after the other as we were drinking beer and dabbling with music. We didn't go out that evening, but stayed in and drank more beer, and Chris played guitar while Mark tried out my bodhran.

The music we played over the weekend was actually far more successful than last year. Chris had his twelve-string with him, and I know more whistle tunes than I did last summer, and we've sang songs together enough times at random parties to have a reasonably familiar repertoire. Elly and I, as I've mentioned, just clicked together vocally. When we sang "Blood and Gold" at the lunchtime Folk Club in Towersey Village Hall on Sunday, we got a really warm reception; a rare "lovely job" from the MC and various people asking me in the ladies afterwards if we had a CD out. And we're thinking, well, why on earth not? Plenty of talented amateurs produce CDs, it's a huge part of the folk scene. We'll need to spend a year or so writing some of our own songs, and some arrangements, and learning a few more instruments, but the two of us and romauld are Plotting.

And I played my saxophone. I PLAYED MY SAXOPHONE. Understand this. Apart from an abortive auditioning attempt at the beginning of my second year, and couple of days a year at Student Cross I haven't picked up that beast since I left school. And I used to be pretty good, I mean, Grade 6 two years after first picking it up, Grade 8 a year later, and I worked for my diploma but gave up when depression hit at the beginning of sixth form. I consciously decided not to prioritise it and I never entered national competitions, just county ones, but I was playing in various ensembles most nights after school. It was a big part of my life, but never one I really worked as hard as I could at, and never one I was very emotionally invested in - I just sort of let it happen. And then when I came to uni I brought it with me for the first year and a bit until I accepted I just didn't play it any more and started leaving it at home again.

But last weekend I got it out of its case and fitted a new reed and picked it up, and I ran through a few pieces including the Bach I did for my Grade 8 to get the arpeggios back under my fingers, and then it was - well, it wasn't great, but it was sort of there, still. And I played a few jigs and polkas that I know on the whistle (the fingering's the same if you transpose, but if you're being accompanied by an instrument that can capo then you kind of don't need to) and I was hugely self-conscious and wibbly but it actually worked for a while, for the brief moments I could relax into it. I'm so glad I did. Any everyone was very nice about it and said I didn't sound terrible at all, and I don't think I did, either. Obviously I was horrendously rusty but when I stopped thinking about it and just did it, my embouchure and fingering came back as if it were instinctive. Of course I wore out my lip within an hour and it was swollen for the rest of the weekend, but I can work on that. So very worth it. I want more. Also, playing folk tunes on a sax and twelve string works really really well. Unfortunately, double basses are a little unwieldy, but we have plans to enlist mirabehn on hers at the next opportunity.

The gigs were amazing, and as this entry is already so long I shall write a separate one for my reviews of the bands. The only other thing I need to mention is on the last night. We'd been playing music, and people turned in at about midnight. The night before we'd ended up going to bed earlyish, but a huge crowd a couple of tents away gathered for an impromptu ceilidh. We were camping near some of the smaller bands. There was a tuba, and a sax, and an accordion and a fiddle and possibly some other things, and the main thing I remember is that they played Jingle Bells over and over again for no particular reason, and I lay awake listening for a while and thinking that I could probably keep up with that saxophonist by ear, and wishing I had the nerve and the energy to go over and join them. So on the Sunday night when people turned in, and Mark and I were still awake, we headed in the direction of the music coming from a marquee in the next field over. It was called the Hive and hosted the youth sessions and workshops during the day, and we hadn't actually been there at any point during the weekend. It was seething. There was a bar, a cafe, an enormous dance tent with live music, and the dancefloor was crammed. The band was playing a weird fusion of folk tunes, hip hop, jazz and funk, underlain by an African-sounding drumming that got utterly under your skin. We downed our drinks and danced like nutters, alternating between skanking, twirling Elizabethan steps, punk stomping, ceilidh moves. Then it sort of fused spontaneously into a ceilidh, a huge, sweaty, crammed ceilidh with this great black guy practically rapping the calls and the tune racing along but with this slow, funked out beat underneath so rather than skipping the steps we were skanking them, hips swinging, knees high. We were in a square set with four gorgeous sixth-form age girls in ballgowns and two of the lads who'd danced madly in front of the stage during Kate Rusby's gig, and the eight of us rocked. The dance involved two steps and a dosey-do with your corner partner, and mine was a tiny, solemn, graceful girl with flaming red curls, wearing a black dress that glittered bronze in the strobelights. It was a surreal and sublime experience. I lost Mark when the band finished and we headed back to the tents, but after I found him there we were caught by two of the people we'd met at Trowbridge last year, doseybat's colleague and his girlfriend, and we stayed up talking and finishing the Glenlivet for about another hour.

(Nick's entry on the weekend is here, and more of his photos can be found here. Elly has also posted The Towersey Quotes Book, which is quite rude and includes footnotes and bibliography.)

Comments

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

Yay for picking up old neglected instruments :)

I'm glad it was a wonderful time for everyone!

[bassista.livejournal.com]

i just saw my favorite band in concert tonight.
and on an even happier note, i got their autographs in my sketchbook. woo!
the happiness took the edge off of the general angst of my father no longer having a home due to hurricane flooding in new orleans. sigh.

i guess it all evens out in the end.

another happy note: my advisor wants me to write the proposal for me going to brazil and making large scale kinetic sculptures in a public park. brazil! art! me! i get paid to do this!!!

[applecatching.livejournal.com]

Okay, what was I last time? You might remember me as steeraway or orangeofcloves and praiseyou.

...a sea-change
Into something rich and strange

Journal - applecatching.
Poems - paper_ghosts.

I hope this makes sense :-)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

hello! good to see the personal journal is back - I've added you :)

[notsoape.livejournal.com]

This is probably a comment I should have written over a year ago, but oh well!

Basically I am realdoll's sister, Susie, and by writing this I probably am finally admitting to myself that in just over 2 weeks I will be commencing my Archaeology and Anthropology course at Downing. This is pretty terrifying, especially after a long and Interesting-But-Definitely-Not-Academic gap year; however, I have had a pretty enjoyable past two weeks fairly burrowed in Durham Uni library, remembering why I fell in love with this course in the first place.

I suppose I'm really just asking for some reassurance that people of Downing are not for the most part demonic or mean, that the workload is at some level managable and.. I don't know what else, really! Jenny tells me that you very much enjoyed your time at Downing, which is reassuring enough in itself, and also that you were taught by the very same dusty and bearded lecturer who threw coins at me and talked enthusiastically about death during my first interview! (It was following this interview that I rang my mum with a huge grin on my face and told her "I love it here!"). Having a gap year has given me a bunch of time to think everything through, and so I am mostly feeling bewilderingly calm, with momentary bouts of panic.

Really my only specific question - or worry rather - is that the Director of Studies, on whose interests and expertise I pretty much entirely based my choice of college on, has.. left. For Stirling. This has thrown me quite unexpectedly, I think just because I had met her twice before and she seemed enthusiastic about things like my placement at The Monkey Sanctuary and... I know its a really silly thing to be concerned about, but it does feel odd that she wont be there when I get to Cambridge. I suppose what I'm really asking is, does it really matter whether you and your Director of Studies share a special enthusiasm for the same subject areas? I mean, I really do love most aspects of Social and Biological Anthropology (Archaeology is still growing on me!) but primatology is, i suppose, my "passion" or something equally wanky.

Anyway, that's quite enough from me. As I say, any gentle reassurance of any sort would be lovely, but just knowing that somebody has gone through it all and come out the other side is very reassuring :)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Hello! Ah, the perils of lj-real life interaction :)

Since this is a public entry, do you mind terribly if i email you instead of replying here? I'm not going to say anything incriminating, but it would be more discreet :)

[notsoape.livejournal.com]

Ahh, no problem; notsoape@hotmail.com :).

[notsoape.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, feel free to screen this thread if you want?