Photo by Matt DeBow
What is the soundtrack to the daily life of a fairy? Faerieworlds Summer Celebration concert-goers will tell you that pixies and wood nymphs have no particular preference of genre, from hard rock to gypsy punk to Celtic world music.
Members of the crowd in front of the main stage channeled the melody differently; some closed their eyes and let it take control of their bodies and fluidly move them, while others reclined at the fringe of the dance floor on lawn chairs and picnic blankets sipping sun tea and staring up at the stage with perplexed gazes. Sun-soaked silken pink-purple fairy wings and burning sticks of sage combined with the rhythm and harmonies emanating from the stage, as well as from the chants of the crowd itself, completed the intoxicating mythical experience.
The first band to take the main stage was the New York duo Gypsy Nomads, comprising of female percussionist and bilingual singer Samantha Stephenson accompanied by fellow percussionist and acoustic guitar player Scott Helland. The Nomads bestowed an old world gypsy sound of Celtic and medieval folk music. There were brief moments of punk rock as Helland would stomp a distortion pedal and lay down whining, ear-splitting power chords reminiscent of Metallica riffs.
“This song is called ‘Caravan,’” Stephenson said, placing her drum back on the stage floor and beginning to sing in French. With the language change came the first palpable glimpse of the band’s gypsy roots, as Helland changed his guitar’s tone again to a bright, clean, soothing murmur and began to finger pick arpeggios.
The guitarist put down his axe halfway through their set and took his place behind a jungle of steel drums, complimenting Stephenson’s rhythmic barrage and creating the illusion of a dozen drummers with mechanical syncopation. The energy of the crowd was kicked up a notch as the drum solo approached its climax, and even the spaced-out, lethargic recliners began to trickle front and center into the circle of dancers.
After the opening ceremony and “Spiral Dance,” consisting of hundreds of fairies spinning and dancing in a paganistic, counterclockwise frolic, David Helfand and the Majestic Ensemble took the stage and lulled the dancers with traditional world music. Helfand’s backup bands consisted of a young man with a spindly ponytail playing electric fiddle with lightning speed, and a woman in a black-purple robe covered in moon, star, and sun decals beating a drum harnessed around her neck. A drummer played a trap set and held down the rock and roll backbeat along with a red, white and gray-haired old man plucking a four string bass.
“This number is called ‘From a Distant Time,’” Helfand said, placing his lute in a guitar stand and sitting down in front of a Celtic harp, sweeping his fingers across the strings to achieve an eerie, echoing harmony. The dancers slowed to a standstill, absorbed in the harp’s lullaby. As the tune picked up, the woman drummer grabbed a tin whistle to complement the harp.
A young couple gently danced together at the foot of the stage with their pudgy, giggling baby in a chest harness. Far across the grassy field, out of sight of the stage, a woman with long black hair wearing skin-tight jungle camouflage spandex contorted herself to the harp’s crooning as ambling passersby stopped and stared. She was devoid of all senses except the music in her ears and the matted grass beneath her feet, shut out from the sunshine and bustle of the festival’s commerce, lost in a world of mellifluous, harmonious fairy enchantment.
Take a peak at what the faeries (both good and bad) were wearing in The Fusion of Faerie Fashion.
