The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/folk-music)
Except that what I heard then were no musical notes. These were sounds of the earth. Crackling; slowly rumbling; like a fissure opening up on the ocean floor; or a mountain growing, or a volcano awakening after millennia of stillness. The music had not even started that I was already captivated.
Eric O. Scott continues his conversation with Danica Boyce, host of the Fair Folk Podcast, about her research into folk song and tradition for her new course on Pagan ritual music.
Lyonel Perabo interviews Einar Selvik, the frontman of the Nordic folk band Wardruna and a composer for the soundtrack of the new video game, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.
It’s just after noon, and I am sitting under the canopy of my friend Sarah’s booth in the merchant circle of the Heartland Pagan Festival. The heat is punishing this year, with temperatures in the 90s and humidity is pushing the heat index up into hundreds, and most of our fellow pilgrims are hiding, languid, in whatever cool spot they can find. If I weren’t scheduled to lead a workshop in an hour, I would have sequestered myself in my cabin, spread out under the inexcusable luxury of a ceiling fan, but alas. Instead I am here, plucking out the chords on a dulcimer in my lap and whispering the lyrics to “Wild Mountain Thyme” under my breath: Well the summer time is comin’, and the fields are sweetly bloomin’…
“That’s a very soothing sound,” says Sarah, being generous. I’m not much good on the dulcimer.