Back from Bunkfest
I'm still none the wiser about what Bunkfest means and why. But it was a grand occasion, taking up all the park in the centre of Wallingford, which is called the Kinecroft (well, what else would it be called?) I drove in with my performer's car parking permit, in good time to look around the whole site and spend my £5 lunch voucher at La Grande Bouffe (winner of the Best Stall prize at Glastonbury 2003). This was the sum total of the pecuniary reward I had agreed, so it's a good job I'm glad of every opportunity to tell, and increase my experience.
Most of what was going on on the Kinecroft during the day, was dancing by various teams from around the country. Something strange seems to have happened to morris dancing since I last looked at it. Back then, they mostly wore white outfits. All very pagan stuff, no doubt; but they were our pagans; Christian, like. Now many if not most of the teams seem to perform in black, with masks or black faces, as if they wanted to look like middle-aged Goths, and they're called things like the Witchmen, or the Wild Hunt Bedlam Morris.
We've had a lot of sociologists thinking about secularisation over the years; what about someone looking at the paganisation of British institutions? What could be more institutional and Establishment than morris dancing, I mean to say?
There were also the other ingredients of folk festivals, like the colourful stalls selling t-shirts, jewellery, reflexology sessions, and of course the beer tent, where it was naturally a duty for me to sample some of the real ales. (Encouraging small local business, don't you know?)
Then off to the fringe - the very fringe - venue for the Storytelling Fringe event. It was not an especially congenial setting, and the eventual audience for this public telling - max. 30, usually more like 18 - was considerably less than my usual audience for more private gigs. My performance also wasn't the best ever; but like I say, it's all practice. I told The Legend of Baal Shem Tov; The Man Who Looked On His Face In A Mirror; Mrs Field's Chocolate Chip Cookies; The Unluckiest Man in the World; and The Rabbi's Tale of the Marksman.
And so, as the bands and folk groups begin to warm up for the main business of the evening, the weary storytellers wend their way home to rest.
Most of what was going on on the Kinecroft during the day, was dancing by various teams from around the country. Something strange seems to have happened to morris dancing since I last looked at it. Back then, they mostly wore white outfits. All very pagan stuff, no doubt; but they were our pagans; Christian, like. Now many if not most of the teams seem to perform in black, with masks or black faces, as if they wanted to look like middle-aged Goths, and they're called things like the Witchmen, or the Wild Hunt Bedlam Morris.
We've had a lot of sociologists thinking about secularisation over the years; what about someone looking at the paganisation of British institutions? What could be more institutional and Establishment than morris dancing, I mean to say?
There were also the other ingredients of folk festivals, like the colourful stalls selling t-shirts, jewellery, reflexology sessions, and of course the beer tent, where it was naturally a duty for me to sample some of the real ales. (Encouraging small local business, don't you know?)
Then off to the fringe - the very fringe - venue for the Storytelling Fringe event. It was not an especially congenial setting, and the eventual audience for this public telling - max. 30, usually more like 18 - was considerably less than my usual audience for more private gigs. My performance also wasn't the best ever; but like I say, it's all practice. I told The Legend of Baal Shem Tov; The Man Who Looked On His Face In A Mirror; Mrs Field's Chocolate Chip Cookies; The Unluckiest Man in the World; and The Rabbi's Tale of the Marksman.
And so, as the bands and folk groups begin to warm up for the main business of the evening, the weary storytellers wend their way home to rest.
posted by Tony at 9/04/2004 07:00:00 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home