{"id":526,"date":"2005-09-29T03:49:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-29T03:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=526"},"modified":"2005-09-29T03:49:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-29T03:49:00","slug":"526","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=526","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Celto-Pagan Music<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am not exactly the go-to guy on Pagan music. Jason Pitzl-Waters, who is an actual DJ, has much broader knowledge, and once he has finished re-doing it, you should drop by his music site<\/a>, check the links, and download his “Darker Shade of Pagan” mp3 files.<\/p>\n

Being more a historian, I have been thinking about the Pagan singer-songwriter Gwydion Pendderwen (1946-1982). (The “dd” is pronounced like a dipthong “th,” by the way. That was an SCA name that became Pagan name, and Gwydion is one of a relatively short list of people I know who became<\/em> their Pagan names in almost all areas of life.)<\/p>\n

Gwydion and I were friends for the last five years of his life; this thumbnail photo was taken near Victor, Colo., when he was conducting one of his “faerie shaman” rituals. The Faerie Shaman<\/em> was the name of his second album, and he is shown here in his performance garb.<\/p>\n

Now Serpentine Music<\/a> is planning a reissue of his recorded music, and owner Anne Hill<\/a> asked me to write a contribution to the liner notes, which sent me spinning back to the mid-1970s when his Songs for the Old Religion<\/em> was the first professionally produced and nationally distributed Pagan album–and what a thrill it was to put it on the turntable.<\/p>\n

There is so much more now. As I mentioned earlier<\/a>, some music-lovers have gotten tired of the harps-and-folk guitars approach to Pagan music, and that’s OK. I like trance music too.<\/p>\n

<\/a>But out on the misty edge of British Columbia, that Celtic\/World Beat harp-driven sound still feels right. There the group Jaiya<\/a> has issued two CDs with Pagan calendrical themes: Firedance: Songs for Winter Solstice<\/em> and Beltane: Songs for the Green Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Both blend new and traditional tunes. Both, to borrow Robert Graves’ summation of the Theme, deal with the single subject of true poetry, Life and Death.<\/p>\n

Tags: Pagan music<\/a>, Gwydion Pendderwen<\/a>, Jaiya<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Celto-Pagan Music I am not exactly the go-to guy on Pagan music. Jason Pitzl-Waters, who is an actual DJ, has much broader knowledge, and once he has finished re-doing it, you should drop by his music site, check the links, and download his “Darker Shade of Pagan” mp3 files. Being more a historian, I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-526","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":569,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=569","url_meta":{"origin":526,"position":0},"title":"Bringing back The Faerie ShamanAnne\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Bringing back The Faerie ShamanAnne Hill of Serpentine Music updates us on the progress of a new CD of Pagan songwriter Gwydion Pendderwen's music.There is nothing like producing an album to make you absolutely sick of whatever music it is you\u2019re producing, no matter what you thought of it before....I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":597,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=597","url_meta":{"origin":526,"position":1},"title":"Gwydion Pendderwen re-masteredEarlier posts here\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Gwydion Pendderwen re-masteredEarlier posts here and here.The reissue of Pagan singer\/songwriter Gwydion Pendderwen's work in a two-CD set is now available. You can order these works from Serpentine Music.Anna Korn and I provided some of the liner notes, which include reproduced covers of the original vinyl albums and other photographs.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":465,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=465","url_meta":{"origin":526,"position":2},"title":"Trance danceJason Pitzl-Waters links to\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 3, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Trance danceJason Pitzl-Waters links to an article arguing that \"house music\" and other descendents of disco are the true soundtrack of the Pagan movement. (There are some examples to be downloaded.)Like the writer, I too, am tired of \"boring stereotypes of what witchy, pagan music should be.\" And I can\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7274,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7274","url_meta":{"origin":526,"position":3},"title":"“Songs for the Old Religion” \u2014 the Rest of the Story","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan bard Gwydion Pendderwen's album Songs for the Old Religion (1973) was the first openly Pagan LP ever, that I know of. (There was Guitar Grimoire too, but it was all instrumental.) On the\u00a0Agora Patheos blog, Dana Corby tells the story of how it was made (part 1), including why\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"California\"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=california"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":146,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=146","url_meta":{"origin":526,"position":4},"title":"'A hint of paganism' Sydney\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"'A hint of paganism' Sydney Carter, who wrote the hymn \"Lord of the Dance\" to a tune (\"'Tis a Gift to be Simple\") originally created by the Shakers, a movement of 19th-century American religious communalists, has died. Says the Daily Telegraph in Britain, \"But the optimistic lines \"I danced in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1757,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1757","url_meta":{"origin":526,"position":5},"title":"P.E.I. Bonewits 1949-2010","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"All around the Pagan blogosphere, tributes are being written today for Isaac Bonewits, who died today. Here is a chronology of his life and tribute by Ian Corrigan. I can add only that he was one of the most prolific and visible figures of the Pagan revival from the 1970s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Isaac Bonewits (2nd from left) at the Greenfield Ranch tree planting, Jan. 1978","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/isaac1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}