Folk Music

The Circlewood Coffee House will continue its series of folk-music performances with an April 19 concert of Irish music by the Wood's Tea Company, starting at 8 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of the Unitarian Church of Cherry Hill on 401 N. Kings Highway. The Coffee House is "going on its second year" of presenting folk-music shows, said Laurie McCarthy Bates, who does publicity for the all-volunteer group. "We're not trying to make a profit," although group members wouldn't mind if they did, Bates said.

Everyone talks about the "new folk" these days, but whatever happened to the "old folk"? The people who first listened to the old folk music when it was new folk music may have families, cars and mortgage payments now, but a lot of them still get the urge to spread a blanket on the grass and listen to the kind of music that is nothing more than a sweet voice and a guitar. Fortunately, there are still plenty of old folk singers out there, traveling the lonesome highways and byways of America with their acoustic guitars.

For Philadelphia folkies, summertime is festival time. This summer it seems as if everyone is getting into the act of staging a folk festival or concert series. From mom-and-pop restaurants to small-town recreation departments, folk music is popular music. There certainly is no lack of venues for folk music year-round. But the grass-roots groups that temporarily take over church community halls and recreation rooms as the Cherry Tree Music Co-op and the Folk Factory in Philadelphia and the CircleWood Coffeehouse in Cherry Hill at other times of the year defer to outdoor spots in June, July and August.

'There is no room for folk music in the commercial music business anymore, and I'm doing my best to keep it alive on the Internet, where hopefully these songs will live on," Roger McGuinn says. Along with his band, the Byrds, McGuinn essentially invented the genre of folk-rock in the mid-'60s by electrifying Bob Dylan's acoustic songs with Beatlesque harmony and chiming guitars. He had cut his teeth on folk music, playing with the Limeliters and the Chad Mitchell Trio before forming the Byrds in 1964.

Sue Deckhart's business card reads: certified medical transcriptionist, songwriter, folk musician. Deckhart, who busily transcribes for three medical practices, still makes time to direct Mom & Pop's Coffeehouse, a folk-music series she started nine years ago at United Christian Church on New Falls Road. The coffeehouse, which has grown from nine to 15 concerts a year, has attracted the likes of Michael Cooney, Small Potatoes, and Kim and Reggie Harris. Featured performers play without a guaranteed fee, getting paid from donations taken at the gate and at the baked-goods table, Deckhart said.

When the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir performed at International House in November, its instrumental accompaniment was an afterthought. The plucked stringed instrument known as the tambura provided the singers with guide tones. Musicians only occasionally outlined the writhing melodies and even then seemed deep in the background. The stabbing syncopations and ear-bending counterlines of Bulgarian folk music would seem suited to a merger of vocal and instrumental styles.

This first weekend of spring brings a musical garden of earthy delights, with a special emphasis on back-to-the-roots folk music, appropriately. Tonight and tomorrow, the Philadelphia Bluegrass and Old-Time Music Festival will be blooming at the Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School in Plymouth Meeting. This evening at 7:30, the flowers of the folksy musical world include the Seldom Scene, Nashville Bluegrass Band, the Lonesome River Band and the Tacky Branch Ramblers. Tomorrow afternoon, beginning at noon, the fest swings into workshops with the music of Uncle Dave Macon, Charlie Poole, Cockerham and Jarrell, interpersed with concert sets with Mountain Laurel, Dry Branch Fire Squad and Roger Spring, Hal Wylie and the Progressive Bluegrassers.

Russian Poteshki, a folk-musical group from the Soviet Union, visited the area recently and appeared at the Moorestown Mall for a free concert that included such native instruments as the balalaika and the domra. While in the area, the group stayed in Moorestown, too.

If John Zorn plays klezmer music, he does so by throwing it into his jazz stew and letting the listener sort it out. The saxophonist and composer performed Sunday night at International House with Masada, a pianoless quartet, a la Ornette Coleman; many of his compositions, on the surface, came off straight ahead, with deep roots in bop. But deeper listening did bring into focus Zorn's intentions. Throughout the evening's two sets, the quartet provided an intellectual, well-realized combining of traditions - the blues and European Jewish folk music - that share many affinities.

Temple Sinai will hold its first program at its newly opened Cantor's Cafe in Norristown at 8 p.m. Jan. 12. The evening will feature the synagogue's cantor, Stephen Freedman, who will present Hebrew, Israeli and Yiddish folk music. Freeman is an accomplished folksinger and composer who often performs his own arrangements as well as traditional songs. Light refreshments will be available. Tickets are $18 in advance and $20 at the door. Call 215-643-6510 for tickets or reservations.

Benita Segal does not underestimate the healing power of music. In fact, it is only when she picks up one of her 10 guitars and begins strumming, singing, and creating her "alternative country" sound that she truly feels at peace. "I get lost in the guitar, in the music," explained the 59-year-old Mount Laurel resident, who has been reinventing herself since 2006 with an art form she dabbled in as a teenager. That was in an era, she says, of flower children, folk music and the antiwar movement; a culture influenced by Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Croce.

WHEN the Philadelphia Folk Festival locks into gear at noon Friday on the Old Pool Farm in Upper Salford Township, it won't be with some old-timey string band, rural bluesman or British chantey singer. Michigan-based singer/songwriter Chris Bathgate has a slow-rockin', bittersweet-romantic aura that could win the hearts of the same teens and twentysomethings who pant for a John Mayer or Ed Sheeran. And that's exactly the selling point for so much of this weekend's festival in Schwenksville.

Two years after singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell released the ambitious and career-defining folk opera Hadestown - a musical retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice set in Depression-era America - she's back with a decidedly different but equally ambitious effort, Young Man in America. Produced by Todd Sickafoose, who also helmed Hadestown, the new album features several New York-based rock and experimental jazz musicians, and has Mitchell inhabiting several musical characters, male and female.

Bert Jansch, 67, a legendary folk guitarist, died in London on Wednesday after a long battle with lung cancer. Mr. Jansch was a founding member of the influential group Pentangle, which won wide acclaim in the late 1960s and the 1970s, and he also enjoyed a solo career that spanned five decades and more than 25 albums. Known for his gentle eloquence on the acoustic guitar, the Scottish-born Mr. Jansch was a central figure in the British folk-music revival in the 1960s and played to appreciative audiences throughout the world for many decades.

Special Events Animal Care & Control Team's Kitten Ice Cream Social Enjoy free ice cream and learn more about providing foster care for kittens. Philadelphia Animal Care & Control Shelter, 111 West Hunting Park Ave. loveaphillycat.com. 7/9. Noon-3 pm. Hispanic Fiesta Celebration of Latin cultures around the world. Dancing, folk music, crafts & more. Penn's Landing, Columbus Blvd.; 215-922-2386. Closes 7/10. Holistic Nutrition for Dogs and Cats Presentation by Dr. Natasha Kassell.

The esteem in which Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson is held in the folk-music community is best expressed by Texas troubadour Guy Clark in his song "Dublin Blues. " "I have seen the David ," Clark sings. "And the Mona Lisa , too / And I have heard Doc Watson play 'Columbus Stockade Blues.' " These days, the 88-year-old musician - a masterful acoustic guitarist and singer who has been blind since infancy - doesn't play much outside his home base in western North Carolina, where every April he hosts the MerleFest music festival named after his son, Merle, who died in a tractor accident in 1985.

Hers is a voice you can't mistake for any other: high, tremulous, non-Western, a voice for all that's human, a voice from the '60s all the way to the present. Buffy Sainte-Marie - Canada-born First Nations (Cree) woman, songwriter, singer, activist - plays at World Cafe Live at 8 p.m. Monday. She promises a mix of hits - including "Universal Soldier" and "Up Where We Belong" - plus "songs that Philly audiences have never heard. " It'll be a highly eclectic outing. She's a folkie and a C&W fan who loves Edith Piaf, flamenco singer Carmen Amaya, Delta bluesman Bukka White, and Elvis.

The ongoing struggle among composers to find their own voices was illustrated with wide-reaching perspective in two concerts during the weekend that explored music separated by roughly half a millennium. While the Renaissance band Piffaro played music of 16th-century Italy, when composers barely knew what an individual voice was, Ars Nova Workshop showcased works by young composers Steve Lehman and Vijay Iyer, both finding their way in world where the many fierce voices of the past can overwhelm those of the present.

NEW YORK - As with many musical retirements, reports of Anonymous 4's was greatly exaggerated, amounting to a 2004 hiatus that just didn't stick. The public wasn't willing to let go of the four-voiced medieval group, either as a recording entity or a trance-inducing concert presence. A change of artistic direction happily threw the singers into old-time Americana. And the increasingly numerous stories about their music's medicinal value became a further inducement to limit the hiatus.

THE CAROLINA Chocolate Drops have been earning national attention on outlets like "Fresh Air" and scoring big successes at festivals like Bonnaroo. Earlier this year, they hit No. 2 on the Billboard magazine "Heatseekers" chart with their major-label debut album, "Genuine Negro Jig," for Nonesuch. None too shabby for an act that dwells mostly in old-timey string-band music, from the post-Civil War Reconstructionist era to the 1930s. It's stuff that most people would dismiss as "rustic" or "quaint" for its core scoring of fiddle, banjo, guitar, autoharp and voice, with rhythmic accents of rattling "bones" and mouth-blown jug and kazoo.