What do Druids sing?
This question had a great deal to do with me self identifying as a druid in the first place. I was asked at a folk club to sing ‘one of my druidy songs’ had no idea what it meant, and started asking questions. Up until then I’d been just pagan. So, this week Silverbear asked in the comments about singing, and I figured it’s a good topic and worth a poke.
There isn’t a vast body of Druid songs out there to draw on. We have a few truly awesome performers, Damh the Bard http://damh.wordpress.com/ being the songwriter whose work I am most familiar with. I’ve learned a lot of Druid thinking from that man! Plenty of us look to the folk tradition (John Barleycorned to death once more) but that’s not an answer for everyone. Here are some ideas about what to look for in a song, because it is entirely possible to steal from a great many places in order to source good material to sing in ritual or as an expression of your Druidry.
1) It has to be viable to perform the song with the gear you have in the kinds of spaces you use. Mostly this means unplugged and with whatever you can play or whoever you can talk into helping you out. Some songs can be stripped down to just words and tune and work fine, others fall apart. With practice it gets easier to spot which is which, expect to have a few fails as part of the learning process.
2) It needs to be something you are technically capable of pulling off under pressure. I’m all for taking on challenges, but for live performance, comfy is good. Outside, your voice doesn’t carry as well, the need for increased volume will probably compromise your range, and your fingers may shake. Budget for this.
3) Songs about the seasons are good, or that reflect for you some essence of a season. Sting’s Fields of Gold (which strips down to guitar and voice with no trouble) is, for example, a really lovely Lugnasadh song. There’s many a lusty rock ballad that makes sense at Beltain and many a mournful goth thing that could be rolled out for Samhain, for example.
4) Story songs are good. There’s only so much ooh ah love ya baby material that any one circle can take, but a song with a narrative, can be made to work. It is, for example, entirely possible to sing Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell unaccompanied, and it’s a great story (hard on the voice though, with reference to point 2). Narrative songs are always a plus.
5) Songs of protest are powerful. For events like Peace One Day, anti war songs are a must. But there are many songs, in many genres that are full of protest. Killing in the Name of is unlikely to work unplugged, but you can get some John Lennon in there, and dig out all those sixties peace love and freedom songs.
6) Songs that mean something to you. If you find a song meaningful, resonant, important then you’ll sing it that way, and often that just works. Don’t be afraid to try it.
7) Accidental deity songs. Just sometimes, taken out of context and sung by a pagan, some of the love songs in the world can start to sound more like hymns of praise to a deity. Experiment, see what speaks to you.
8) Write your own. This is always good, because it comes from your heart.
My only ‘don’t’ is, don’t nick things off the Christians and re-write the words. It’s a bit sad and usually awkward and mostly doesn’t work.
