Folkloria 2021 came at a very interesting time. This is our account of the festival.
The day:
The whole festival was beautiful. The weather was perfect and the folkloria team had done an amazing job setting the
place up and were incredibly hospitable to all the artists.
Our set:
After watching all the other artists boldly share their songs and stories it was our turn. It was so lovely to look out and see so many smiles was a joy and then in our third song... someone started to DANCE! No it wasn't some reckless criminal, it was just human who hadn't danced at a gig for 2 years. And by about 30 seconds later there was... let's say.…. more than 1 person dancing. It was as if 2 years of pent-up emotion was being released before our very eyes and it was a beautiful thing to watch. But all the while there was this tension on stage of wanting to see
this expression of joy continue but not wanting to see our beloved folkloria cop a massive fine and risk their future as a festival. We got the apologetic word from side-
stage that if people didn't sit down then we had to stop playing so the Bromham team jumped into action and dropped the song rillilight back to only about 3 instruments (which is a pretty low number for us) and we apologized and the m lovely audience sat down and continued to wriggle in their seats and send us smiles. By this stage half the band were tearing-up at having to suppress these people's nature as groovers and we spent the next song or two crying and singing our little hearts out for the people. The rest of the set had a great vibe with people grooving around in their seats. Then halfway through our final song the tension boiled over and "the dance" took over peoples bodies again. And it was beautiful! Again we were emotionally torn but thought it would be ok until the end of the song. That was until a security guard hopped on stage and whispered in our ear "The Cops are here!" So the Bromham team sprung into action once more. While continuing to play we coaxed each other into a huddle and crouched down, and so did the crowd. When we reached the drop into the outro, without saying a word to each other, followed the old fire-safety motto "stay low and go go go!" Georgy crawled over and gave her glockenspiel to a child in the crowd, Tom lounged side stage in his cowboy hat and played his tambourine, Bryce just kept drumming and bryn lay flat on his back in the middle of stage playing his mandolin. After a little
time of this silly madness Tushar brought the song back to the bridge and we all sung out the end of the song together.
This was one gig that we will never forget.
