Anybody fancy a regular folk-jam?

In response to me sharing with my friends on Facebook my latest progress update on the various instruments I’d recently started learning to play, one friend made an off-the-cuff comment asking when I was going to organise a folk-jam night. It hadn’t actually occurred to me at that point to do such a thing, but the idea has grown in my mind, not least because of thinking about the success of the Moselele ukelele group which happens in Moseley every other Thursday evening.

So here are my initial thoughts about what I might want to do, with a survey to see what other people might want to do.

What kind of folk music do you mean?

To start off answering that question, what I don’t mean is the kind of Bob Dylan / Seth Lakeman / Martin and Eliza Carthy / singer-songwriter kind of modern folk music. What I do mean is ‘traditional’ music – the kind of music that you dance to when you go to a ceilidh or something.

But I’m not thinking of restricting things to just Irish and Scottish jigs and reels – there’s plenty of other fun traditional-style music right around the world to be played, and I’ve got books and books full of the stuff; music from the Isle of Man (which has it’s own distinct folk culture), from Brittany, from France, from Hungary, Bulgaria, Egypt, Romania, Russia, Spain, and North and South America, and elsewhere. The world, as they say, is our oyster.

And although I’m not thinking of focussing on the modern singer-songwriter style of folk music, I wouldn’t want to say we won’t be doing anything like that if people had a burning wish to.

Do I have to be good at playing my instrument?

I’ll admit I’ve always had a hankering after one day playing the main stage at WOMAD, but I’m being realistic here – what has prompted me to see about getting this thing together is me starting to learn a couple of brand new instruments, one of which (the Northumbrian Smallpipes) I’ve been learning for about a month, the other (the Anglo-Concertina) I’ve been learning for a week, and thinking it’d be nice to play them (plus the other instruments I am actually a bit better at…) with other people.

The point of this exercise is for a bunch of people to get together to have fun playing tunes together. If we get to a stage where we can share that playing to listeners then that would be fab, but that’d be a bonus, not the goal.

Where and when were you thinking of doing it?

When – that’s kind of up to you; weekly, fortnightly, monthly? What day of the week? Weeknight evening, or weekend afternoon? If it was to happen more often than monthly I would need to have help organising it, because I wouldn’t necessarily be able to make it every time myself.

Where – somewhere in or close to the city centre; I’ve got a few ideas of possible venues (and indeed somebody from one venue has tentatively made an potential offer already), so once I’ve got firmer knowledge of the level of interest from participants, I can start talking to people.

Would it cost me anything?

It’s possible – likely, even – that any venue we hold it in will expect some form of payment, whether that’s a set fee that they charge for anybody, some kind of donation, or buying stuff that they sell. Even if they’re not expecting anything, it’d only be polite to offer them something. I wouldn’t want to be out of pocket on this, so I’d suggest we split the cost according to how many people turn up. But I wouldn’t want to be going anywhere where each individual had to pay more than £5 anyway.

What next?

I’ve made a survey – if you could fill it in so I know what the interest is, that’d be splendid.

If all happens nice and smooth-like, I’d be hoping to have the first session the first week of March!