Folk Music

Howard County folk music enthusiasts don't need to leave the county to enjoy live performances in an intimate setting.Every Thursday evening from September to May, the Folkal Point presents folk concerts in the upstairs room of the Coho Grill at Hobbit's Glen Golf Club in Columbia. The Folkal Point has presented live music since September 1989.Each Folkal Point evening includes two performers. The opening act, lasting 20 to 30 minutes, often features a local performer. The main performer usually is a well-known member of the folk music circuit.

Like the troubadours it often features, the Uptown Concert Series is on the move again. The folk music series has closed at Mays Chapel United Methodist Church in Timonium because of "policy changes" at the church, says Joyce Sica, impresario of the 11-year-old folk music series.Under her management, the concert series -- known for its eclectic musical lineup, from Odetta to Big Blow and the Bushwackers -- has divided its time among three United Methodist churches: Old Otterbein and Wilson Memorial, both in Baltimore City, and, for the past five years, suburban Mays Chapel, where it was rechristened Uptown Concerts.

Jerry Lapides plays a few bars of the old klezmer wedding dance "Frailach Fun Der Chuppa," "happiness of the nuptial canopy," his harmonica infusing the festive song with an undertone of nostalgic sadness.While he plays, Lapides has the faintly ethereal quality of Marc Chagall's Vitebsk fiddlers. And the "Frailach" has the sound and feel of the wedding music from "Fiddler on the Roof."Klezmer was the folk music of the East European shtetl Chagall painted and Shalom Aleichem chronicled, the small-town Jewish communities lost in the furnace of the Nazi Holocaust.

When the lights dim in the wood-paneled circular sanctuary, tiny flames from votive candles glowing on rows of tables, the Unitarian Universalist church of Annapolis feels like camp.And when a couple of fellows in blue jeans and sneakers take the stage singing folk songs, accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and leading sing-a-longs, you wonder if you've fallen into a time warp or whether the peace and love era has resurfaced in a new generation.Choose the latter. This is the 333 Coffeehouse.

Live music will be in the air all over Anne Arundel this summer, and most of it is free.Banks, neighborhood merchants and cultural arts foundations are sponsoring summer concert series at parks, fields and parking lots, where concertgoers can take a blanket or lawn chair and relax with a picnic dinner to the steel guitar sound of Hawaiian swing or country music, big bands, bluegrass, folk or blues."

Folk music healed Odetta. It gave her a means of expression. And, like an old-time troubadour, she has carried her healing music around the world."I've had people come to me and thank me for healing them," she says on the phone from her New York apartment. "It wasn't me that did the healing. It was the song."She can't explain the magic in music. But she knows that the words, the stories, the melodies touch some universal place deep inside each of us. This is why old songs from another time endure, she says.

Next time you gripe about the hassle of going to work, think for a moment about the men and women of war-torn Sarajevo, who spent years traveling on streets where they were almost as likely to get shot as they were to make it to work on time.Rob Timm, news director at WHFS-FM (99.1), has. And his appreciation for the sort of effort it takes (and continues to take, even though a fragile peace seems to be holding) to operate a radio station under those conditions helps explain why WHFS has been trying to help its sister station in the Bosnian capital.

Folk music used to be a tightly defined genre, with little room for stylistic or instrumental innovation. But it's opened up quite a lot in recent years, and we should be glad - because that leaves plenty of room for singers like Ani DiFranco.At 26, DiFranco has become a major force in folk music without ever playing by the rules. Her last solo album, "Dilate," owed as much to funky-fresh drum beats as to the earnest strum of her acoustic guitar, while her collaboration with Utah Phillips, "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere," manages to make modern studio techniques seem as much a part of folk music as Phillips' old-timey material.

The setting is mellowed by time, and the food and music are in harmony.Baldwin's Station & Pub, the newest incarnation of a riverside restaurant in Sykesville, blends the visual, the audible and the edible in a bid to attract diners and enthusiasts of traditional music to this quiet little town on the south branch of the Patapsco.Co-owners Stewart A. Dearie and Austin Isemann, who also own the Quail Ridge Inn in Mount Airy, took over and renovated the former railroad depot this year.They have addressed the look and feel of the building, along with the food and wine it serves.

"Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes," by Greil Marcus. Henry Holt. 286 pages. $22.50.When John Lennon attempted to chide a culture that had deified him by saying the Beatles had become bigger than Jesus, he was vilified as a blasphemer and bonfires consumed piles of good records.The year before, 1965, Bob Dylan deliberately urinated on the sensibilities of so-called folk purists by opening fire at the Newport Folk Festival with an electric guitar and a rock band.Blasphemer was the least of what Bobby was called by an orthodoxy so anxious to crucify him they didn't have the courtesy to listen first and boo later.

Although it's convenient for some to think of music being divided into totally separate worlds, with the classical variety way over in some isolated corner where only the "elite" indulge in it, there are innumerable connecting, welcoming points between genres. One mission of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's new season is to emphasize such links, programming works that reveal roots planted in folk music or jazz, for example. Last week, bluegrass found its way into the picture via a concerto by Jennifer Higdon featuring a hotshot crossover trio; this week, the folk influences behind familiar pieces by Tchaikovsky and Bartok are being given fresh attention.

Video games score at Ottobar The lowdown -- Put on your game faces and head to the Ottobar on Tuesday for a night of free movies and video game competition. Featured movies will be The Wizard, a 1989 film about kids who try to win a video game championship, and Fistful of Quarters: The King of Kong, a documentary about breaking the Donkey Kong high score. There will also be a competition of the 1980s game Galaga. If you go -- Doors open at 8 p.m.; The Wizard starts at 9 p.m.; The King of Kong starts at 11 p.m. Ottobar is at 2549 N. Howard St. Call 410-662-0069 or go to the ottobar.

During the holiday season, Christmas music is everywhere, but it seems as if a good Hanukkah song is hard to find. That's how pianist Jon Simon felt about 16 years ago. "After hearing all these fun, interesting ways of taking familiar [Christmas] songs and re- interpreting them ... I went home and started noodling around the keyboard," he said. He decided that Jewish music -- including Hanukkah songs, music from other holidays and folk music -- could be revamped and revitalized, as well.

Every couple of years, Christopher Guest pulls his faithful actors and crew together and makes a faux documentary focusing on the deluded members of some intrinsically American subculture. The reviews are great, the film disappears from theaters in a couple of weeks and reappears for its real audience on DVD. Guest has previously made Best in Show, about obsessive dog-lovers, and Waiting for Guffman, about small-town show biz wannabes, all riffing on Rob Reiner's classic, This is Spinal Tap. A Mighty Wind (to be released Tuesday)

They call themselves We're About 9, in a good-natured assessment of their maturity level. But when the trio took the stage on a muggy evening last week to officially open the Columbia Lakefront Summer Concert Series, their youth slid into ambiguity. It was overshadowed by their clear, warm voices; comfortable music and lucid lyrics - despite the bugs, the haze and the temperature, which topped out in the high 90s. The 2 1/2 -year-old group, which describes its music as "suburban folk," is made up of Brian Gundersdorf, a 26-year-old who acts as the main organizer and songwriter; Katie Graybeal, the 22-year-old heart to Gundersdorf's head; and 21-year-old Pikesville native Pat Klink.

When Yo-Yo Ma founded the Silk Road Project in 1998, he could not have anticipated Sept. 11, or the way that recent events have made his venture more meaningful, perhaps even necessary. What the famed cellist started out to do was explore the musical cultures of the ancient lands that bridged Europe and Asia - the countries along the so-called Silk Road that led to the exchange of goods and the cross-pollination of ideas, including musical ones. Today, virtually all of these countries are being affected, in one way or another, by the war on terrorism.

Tonight at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation in Upper Park Heights, they're packing up the prayer books, telling the rabbi to can the sermon and giving the organist the night off. It's not a revolt. It's Friday Night Live, a contemporary Sabbath service that will bring together Baltimore's four Reform congregations: Baltimore Hebrew, Temple Oheb Shalom, Temple Emanuel and Har Sinai. "It's got a little bit of jazz, a little bit of rock 'n' roll, a little bit of klezmer [a type of Jewish folk music]

Like green beer, paper shamrocks and cartoon leprechauns, Irish music has long been a part of St. Patrick's Day here in the United States. For many, St. Patrick's Day without music would be like cabbage without corned beef. But the kind of music we associate with the wearin' of the green is changing. Where once Irish Americans hankered for sweet-voiced tenors crooning "Come Back to Erin," "Mother Machree" and "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling," today's revelers would as soon hear the uilleann pipes and fiddles laying into a set of jigs and reels.

Like the troubadours it often features, the Uptown Concert Series is on the move again. The folk music series has closed at Mays Chapel United Methodist Church in Timonium because of "policy changes" at the church, says Joyce Sica, impresario of the 11-year-old folk music series.Under her management, the concert series -- known for its eclectic musical lineup, from Odetta to Big Blow and the Bushwackers -- has divided its time among three United Methodist churches: Old Otterbein and Wilson Memorial, both in Baltimore City, and, for the past five years, suburban Mays Chapel, where it was rechristened Uptown Concerts.

When the lights dim in the wood-paneled circular sanctuary, tiny flames from votive candles glowing on rows of tables, the Unitarian Universalist church of Annapolis feels like camp.And when a couple of fellows in blue jeans and sneakers take the stage singing folk songs, accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and leading sing-a-longs, you wonder if you've fallen into a time warp or whether the peace and love era has resurfaced in a new generation.Choose the latter. This is the 333 Coffeehouse.