After spending the past two days researching the Christmas carol "Gaudete," two things are clear: 1) This is a really popular carol, and 2) Everyone thinks it's medieval. Well, I Kathryn of Jersey, First of My Name, Mother of Hound Dogs, Burster of Bubbles, am here to disappoint you. "Gaudete" is solidly Early Modern. Many... Continue Reading →
I once encountered a book so demanding of attention that even with my peripheral vision, walking past the ML stacks at the library, its spine jumped out at me. It was KLEZMER! Ever since, I wish every book every had such a title. (LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA!) Today we're not going to talk... Continue Reading →
I want to take a slight detour to talk about socialism and folk music. If you've ever Googled "industrial music," or especially if you've done an academic database search for the term, you find a lot of material on folk music. The artists who came up were familiar—Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax—but I had... Continue Reading →
We left off before the holidays with some background on how medieval fantasy suddenly became mainstream in the '60s. There were also some other semi unintentional mirrorings of the values of the Victorian medieval revivals, where a previously fringe elements advocating for pre-industrial communal lifestyles also became more mainstream. With these cultural threads established, let's... Continue Reading →
Katarina von Sporken
Violent Brain Fever 