| Home | The Bards of Ealdormere | Cry of the Wolf | Ealdorbards E-mail list | Songbooks of the People |
|Kingdom Bard| Downloadable Music | Bardic Photo Gallery | The Bards.ca Webteam | Submissions | Bardic Web links |

Heya, I'm about to start rambling:)...

Knowne world wide, the most popular music in the "bardic" culture of the SCA would appear to come from three sources:

1) Irish/Jacobite tunes of drinking and rebellion.

2) Music of the Napoleonic era

3) 1960/70's folk music.

(followed reasonably closely by "new celtic/brit trad")

The interesting thing here is that, almost without exception, SCAdians all speak of "medieval atmosphere" when talking about what is appropriate music for events. Almost none of it actually sounds medieval. A big part of this would be because, in my opinion, the SCA is more about "rec-reation" than "re-creation" and has created a solid sub-culture of it's own that has some interest in the medieval period. We grew out of SF fandom and our own period of drinking and rebellion, (the 1970's), and while we have evolved, I would suggest that anyone believing we are even remotely a "re-creation" group is fantasizing more than the folks who used to play hobbits and elves. (You only have to look to the really accurate groups to see how far away we are).

The 'bardic" tradition of the SCA is much more about our subculture than about anything actually medieval. We glorify the medieval ideals (as we see them, mostly in a very Victorian way). We even make note in the A&S rules that "Bardic Arts" and "Music" are different things. Bardic Arts is about us, and in that way songs like "You will know they are Vikings cuz they're dumb" are not only appropriate, but fill a necessary place within our culture.

I think the fact that we sing out of period songs is a necessity. Our audience needs this. Some of us may need more (I personally love and do a bunch of the child ballads, as well as stuff from Ravenscroft, etc)...but that doesn't mean our audience needs this. Almost every Bardic Circle begins to die the moment the atmosphere becomes to "medieval"...why? Because I would guess that probably 80% of the people in the society couldn't gives a rat's ass about "being medievally accurate" most of the time. Sure, if the choir is performing they will sit and listen and enjoy it, sure if someone does an accurate A&S piece we might all "ooh and ahhh", but then we go off and discuss computers or grab a beer.

We ARE a modern society. We may like to remove ourselves from the "modern world", but we are definitely modern. Some of us are better at hiding it than others. Some of us are more medievally oriented than others...but we are doing our audiences a disservice if we forget that.

On the other hand...challenging your audience is a big part of any good presentation, and the real thing does that. It is finding a way to make the "medieval experience" accessible to the medievally oriented modern that presents us our greatest challenge as Bards. How we each do that is very much an individual choice. Good luck.

I am glad we continue to try to study the middle ages, do demos and educational activities, etc...It’s part of what keeps us interesting. But if that meant giving up my interest in the culture of Ealdormere, in our people, in favour of "real" history, I would quit tomorrow.

Ramble off (for now:)

NOTE: This rant went out on the E-bards list in late April of 2001 in response to a series of period vs not period messages.