Faerie News 2020

Congrats Eugen Bacon on her book Black Moon (IFWG Publishing Australia): graphic speculative flash fiction. Preorder here

Celebrated author Sophie Masson launched a new website with a focus on her fairytale books, especially those inspired by France.

Ethereal electro-medieval band Dandelion Wine released their new album Le Cœur.

Most recent reading, recommended:

Shadowfell (first in a trilogy) by Juliet Marillier, in the genre of high fantasy: superb storytelling with powerful shapeshifting, balancing adventure with luminosity and emotive suspense. Her book of fairy tales Mother Thorn is due on Serenity Press soon. Her blog

The Swan Maiden (Blessed Bee Books) by Serene Conneeley: an Australian fairy tale, spinning on transformation tale types of selkies and swans, with knowledge of the Cygnus atratus, especially the black swan native to this continent.

[Praise for other books, e.g. the gorgeously illustrated fairytale series by Kate Forsyth & Lorena Carrington, or daring phantasmagoria of Eugen Bacon, is in earlier posts.]

Feature: Faerieworlds

Faerieworlds invited me to perform again! The 3-day Faerieworlds Live From Home spree of eco-social fundraising was full of joy, warmth, inspiration, mirth, transcontinental reunions and discoveries.

Where: Based in Oregon, USA, Faerieworlds is the world’s largest, longest-running fairy festival, established nearly 20 years ago. Amidst the pandemic, this was its first venture online: here

What: Musing in music, art, imagination, it’s a gathering of tribes who revel in costume to the call ‘Live your Legend!’: a ‘bonnaroo for Middle Earth’, a shindig for Elfland, a carousel of elementals.

Who: In 2020, the lineup features troubadours, dancers, storytellers, puppeteers, illustrators and other artists from around the world, from folk/pop/rock legends like Roger Daltrey of The Who, Don McLean, Donovan and the Frouds, to members of platinum German contemporary-medieval bands like Faun, Spanish faery siren Priscilla Hernandez, Woodland, RosaMundi [scroll for more!] and fascinating Scandinavians such as Martine Kraft and Songleilkr. Even a storytelling cook, Wotan!

I was proud to be among Australians including soulful Brother Angus and Wiccan siren Wendy Rule, whose new double album Persephone uncannily suits our era of hibernation. Her incantatory song cycle traces the ancient Greek deity’s descent to the underworld. Collect the eco-wallet & more

Keen to float in waves of incantation, to dream with marine life? Try Little Star, whose beautiful album Celestine is at Bandcamp.

Ready for a possessed Hurdy-Gurdy? Witness Guilhem Desq. How about gothic dream-pop? Jive to Abney Park covering ‘The Never-ending Story’. Activism, anyone? Casey Neill is doing great work with Black Lives Matter, while Hudost is helping districts affected by voter suppression. Its award-winning album Of Water + Mercy comes with videos & fundraisers for social action.

Whilst naming only a few participants, I loved every act.

Each artist gave something unique.

Full billing sheet: Faerieworlds

Links to artists’ sites: PORTL artists page

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Singer-storyteller in Faerieworlds, Marya Stark, inspired a new phrase: ‘singer-teller’. She has a new album entitled Sapphire, with a fabulous video. Details
To quote Marya, pictured in blue below:

‘I believe this music, celebrating the restoration of the balancing of the waters of life, is a nourishing remedy for the times we are in. I offer this labor of love as a healing salve, a song of remembrance of an inner-alchemy... ’ Her concept ‘emerged from a vision ... many years ago of a light sound sphere encoded with prayer and magic from another world, sent through time and lodged inside of the glaciers to sit for thousands of years... When the time would come, the thawing of the glaciers would release the sound codes of these original crystalline alchemies, awakening the sapphire prayer, and return clarity to the waters of life, supporting the thawing of the frozen heart of humanity to fully grieve, feel, and recollect the soul fragments to live integrally with the nature muses of earth. ’

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Below: Faerieworlders Priscilla Hernandez (Yidneth) from Spain & Kelly Miller-Lopez (Woodland, RosaMundi), Faerieworlds co-founder from Oregon & Billy Scudder the resident Green Man

Be sure to catch Priscilla’s new single ‘Surrender’ and subscribe to her You Tube channel or follow her on other sites, starting here. As I type, her latest tweet is about unicorns.

Most artists in this feature are at Bandcamp and/or Patreon. Keep faeries safe at home or solitary groves: support them online.

Priscilla’s imagery expresses custodianship of nature & grace.

Above with moss: Priscilla Hernandez

Below with leaves: Billy Scudder, resident Green Man of Faerieworlds

Kelly Miller-Lopez presented new songs from her solo incarnation RosaMundi at Faerieworlds Live From Home 2020. With sweet passion, she told us that the Latin for squirrels (her muses, whom she rescues and keeps as pets) is Skia Oura, which translates as ‘shadow tale’, relating to ‘fairy tale’. (Ok, so I’ve verified this: ‘Squirrel’ has been in English since the 14th century. It comes from the Greek ‘skiouros’ from ‘skia,’ meaning ‘shadow,’ and ‘oura’ meaning ‘tail.’) She sang of a boy from the trees with the forest in his eyes, and a Guardian of the Wood:

Pics above & right: Priscilla Hernandez (in Spain) watching Kelly Miller Lopez (Oregon) and me Louisa John-Krol (Australia) during Faerieworlds Live From Home 2020.

Below: Kelly Miller-Lopez piping in Woodland and singing in my set 2009 at Faerieworlds. Photos by Byron Dazey.

More about Priscilla’s music:

Yidneth

More about Kelly’s music:

The Woodland Realm

Below: Seasons of Elfland by Woodland,

an album on which we three united.

Available here

So... inspired by Faerieworlds, I assembled a digital album Wisp and Sentinel. This is one of several offerings I’ll be making for Faerieworlders between now and the 20-year Anniversary 2021. Its cover is this photo of me from my Faerieworlds Live From Home set, 2020. Available at Bandcamp.

Why Faerieworlds? Amidst strife and sorrow, it is worth pausing to refresh our souls. Rekindle kindred kin. Uplift our spirits. There are struggles ahead. Battles to save endangered forests, species, democracies. True faerie lore is not escapist. It’s about delving deeper - falling in love with the world. Renewing wonder. Tolkien gave us this metaphor: Ents fought for their forests, alongside Hobbits, Humans, Wizards, Dwarves and Elves, those guardians of the arts. Time to unite. Lately in our allied nations it’s been a struggle to preserve Civil Rights that minorities had only begun to enjoy, or at least glimpse. Now, kleptocratic syndicates try to split progressives into factions, in the playbook of ‘divide and conquer’. Fey spirit is more about gathering, forming circles, yes, rings.

How: Full day re-streams are now at PORTL. Let Faerieworlds be your welcome portal (pun intended) to a new way of gathering fey tribes.

A Mellow Yellow Hello:

Remember the classic ‘Mellow Yellow’, by Donovan? A pioneer of psychedelic folk-pop songwriting, he is an honorary guest of Faerieworlds Live From Home!

This spiel outlines how Donovan was friends with the Beatles, accompanied them on trance-spiritual explorations and taught them finger-picking techniques for songs like ‘Blackbird’ in The White Album.

That song has a sweet spot in my heart, for a friend in my college days taught it to me on the riverbank of her home, her hazel eyes speckled with sunlight; then decades later, a nephew learned to play it while recovering from cancer, and bravely performed it.

My own composition ‘Blackbird’ (co-written with hubby Mark Krol 1990s, after listening to Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’), released by French fairy-world label Prikosnovenie circa 2001 (on Ariel), features a string quartet. Someone uploaded it here. It is also in my Faerieworlds Live set.

Donovan has performed with Faerieworlds hosts Woodland, an honour I am proud to share. On the last day of Faerieworlds Live From Home 2020, he read poetry to us, sang with his wife Linda and held an oak sprig in his garden, sharing with us the wisdom of acorns.

Faerieworlds festivals bring imagination, art, interfaith and ecological respect to new generations. They are family-friendly. In three days at their 2009 encampment, I did not see any litter at all.

Through Faerieworlds’ Mythic Workshops this year, 2020, I discovered acclaimed storyteller & percussionist Aishya Sinclaire, whose book Brown Sugar Fairies I purchased from her website. I also recommend her blog.

Another reason to join the Faerieworlds community is to discover magical online vendors, who would once have spread across fields and groves in a sea of flags, stripes and rainbows.

Faerieworlds is a realm where innocence, beauty, hope, kindness, diverse spiritualities, varied instruments and zany zest for life can thrive. A world where we may still sway in the saffron of Mellow Yellow.

Thank you everyone for making it happen, especially our hosts Kelly & Emilio Miller-Lopez and Robert Gould. Special thanks to Molly Niffin and all the other fey volunteers.

Long live the Faerie Realm!

- Louisa John-Krol, 2020