We went to the New England Folk Festival, affectionately known as NEFFA, helf in a hotel in Marlborough, Mass. At NEFFA, there are a host of performances, demonstrations, and workshops, mostly relating to folk music or folk dance. Carol did some contra dancing and learned some Cuban dance. I heard a performance by some old folkies (sometimes pronounced “fogies”), attempted to keep up in a Renaissance music jam, and participated in a “pub sing” which was held in an outdoors tent.
On our way out, we happened across an actual pub sing, in the bar of the hotel. Now unlike English bars, American bars are often less than welcoming to singers. Besides, Americans tend to be consumers of music, not participants in music, and we in our bars we prefer to listen to either loud recorded music, or heavily amplified musicians. But this was NEFFA, so it was one of the rare occasions when you could go to an American bar where there was loud, live, unamplified, participatory music.
