Articles by Andy Letcher

About Andy Letcher

A writer and a folk musician, Andy is the author of 'Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom' and has published a range of articles and academic papers on subjects as diverse as psychedelics, paganism, bardism, environmental protest, fairies, shamanism and evolution. A modern day troubadour, he plays mandolin, writes songs, and fronts darkly crafted folk band, Telling the Bees. A leading exponent of the English Bagpipes, he plays for brythonic dancing in a trio called Wod.

Pay the Fiddler. When Can We Have Sustainable Music?

29/03/2017 Andy Letcher

Perhaps we need a sea change in culture, where art and artists come to be valued once again. (read more)

Can Music Ever Be Sustainable?

27/03/2017 Andy Letcher

Pop music can create not just idols, but shaman-like figures who help us negotiate our way through life and death. How do we keep it coming? (read more)

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Towards a Sustainable Music

18/03/2017 Andy Letcher

Making a living is just one aspect of the sustainable music industry that isn’t happening (read more)

To Mow a Meadow (Green Scythe Fair)

12/01/2017 Andy Letcher

Remember where your food comes from. Remember the hands that toiled for you. (read more)

A Wedding Without a Bagpipe is Like a Funeral

10/12/2016 Andy Letcher

Bagpiping provides a route straight to the heart of another culture. (read more)

Look Again: The Way of the Morris

03/10/2016 Andy Letcher

Forget the decades of Pythonesque ribbing, Morris dancing is deep rooted folk ritual (read more)

A Decade of ‘Delics: Shroom, Ten Years On

20/09/2016 Andy Letcher

Ten years later, the cultural history of the magic mushroom still gathers fans and furore (read more)

Smell the air and rub the sky

12/06/2015 Andy Letcher

For most of us in the cities and towns the weather is just something that happens to us, something inconvenient, an impediment. Perhaps we should pay it more attention. (read more)

Walking With Plants

22/12/2014 Andy Letcher

Is a Native American Church peyote ceremony less shamanistic than a Neo-Pagan sweat-lodge simply by virtue of its using a teacher plant? (read more)

Pagan Britain (and Ronald Hutton)

05/11/2014 Andy Letcher

Qithin the generous limits imposed by the evidence you’re free to imagine the past how you like. (read more)

On Troubadours, Sufism and Robert Graves

28/07/2014 Andy Letcher

The original medieval troubadours, who expounded the art of Courtly Love through poetry and song and who were embroiled with the heretical ideas of gnosticism and Catharism, owed their existence to Sufi mystics (read more)

On Twitter, Birdsong and Bards

08/05/2014 Andy Letcher

The Mistle Thrush reminds us not to be beguiled by outward display but to see through to what, if anything, lies beneath. (read more)

A picture of a cat footprint in Africa by Jyoti

Scary Monsters

20/02/2014 Andy Letcher

Fiction is fiction and monsters are not predators: they’re monsters. As such they’re human projections, our worst nightmares made flesh. (read more)

Drawing Inspiration

07/01/2014 Andy Letcher

Symbols don’t mean anything; rather they are fecund triggers to the imagination that allow meaning to arise through their contemplation. (read more)

Dragon Paths and Pilgrimages

02/01/2014 Andy Letcher

At a time when many of us experience a profound sense of disconnection or even alienation from the land, we need more modern pilgrimages (read more)

Druids, Magic Mushrooms and Cultural Memory

10/10/2013 Andy Letcher

Iron Age Druids might have known about and used magic mushrooms even if there’s no way of testing it. (read more)

Bosky Man Visits Scarfolk

04/07/2013 Andy Letcher

I became convinced that the village had a darker secret. I was quite certain that it had its very own coven of witches. (read more)

Notes from the Noosphere

13/03/2013 Andy Letcher

The interconnectedness of all things internet has less in common with the neural network as with a fungal mycelium. So writes Andy Letcher (read more)

Brythonic Gyrations

13/02/2013 Andy Letcher

I see Breton dances as a kind of bhajan. They are about losing yourself to something greater. We forget the Dionysian at our peril. (read more)

Evolution of a Classic [Folk Music]

23/01/2013 Andy Letcher

The sipsi is a small reedpipe, played using circular breathing, with a wild and thrilling sound. I was immediately captivated by the lumpy nine-time rhythms and mind-boggling technique. (read more)

Locomotion

26/12/2012 Andy Letcher

The trick of getting a lift is not in persuading someone to stop. It is in being at exactly the right place at the right time such that the person who would give you a lift and is heading your way just happens to be passing. Being in the right place at the right time. The Taoist rule of thumb. (read more)