minstrel: RE: Corvus Corax (medieval music)

[Dancing Ferret]

At 03:00 PM 10/11/2005, Greg wrote:
>After seeing their ad in the back of TI, I listened to a few of their
>tracks, and I'm very impressed. It's what you would imagine a bunch of
>university students studying medieval music but who like techno and
>the Goth scene would play. It's heavier on percussion than usual, and
>it makes the music pretty accessible to the modern ear. But it still
>is quite faithful to the originals.
>
>One wonders if they're going to wear their Goth outfits at the renfair!
>
>-- Gregory

They've packed around 350 pounds of medieval garb for the concerts.  I'm 
not sure how they're going to find energy to play after lugging all those 
instruments and costume cases through Berlin and Philadelphia airports. The 
instruments are another 500 pounds on top of the garb!

Speaking of Play-By-Mail gaming, definitely nice to run into you again, Greg.

Corvus Corax are well past their days as university students. I suppose 
they'd not be pleased with me discussing exact ages, but you can make an 
educated guess from their photos.

The percussion is heavy because they have HUGE drums, and usually 2-3 
people drumming at once.  I thought they had a techno-drum track in the 
background the first time I heard them, but no, it's all organic, authentic 
drums.

I suppose it is technically true that not all of their music is "medieval" 
as some of it predates that general time period.  One of their tracks, 
"Chou Chou Sheng," is a Chinese piece that goes back around 3000 years, if 
memory serves.  In the fifteen years they've been doing this, they've thus 
far resisted the temptation to make use of the pseudo-medieval Childe 
Ballads and similar material.

I'm very excited about the concerts - hopefully some of you list folks can 
make it out.

[Patrick]