Author: Andy Letcher

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.

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sustainable music

Pay the Fiddler. When Can We Have Sustainable Music?

29/03/2017

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

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Can Music Ever Be Sustainable?

27/03/2017

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?...

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sustainable music by pixabay and publicdomainpictures 1024

Towards a Sustainable Music

18/03/2017

Making a living is just one aspect of the sustainable music industry that isn't happening...

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To Mow a Meadow (Green Scythe Fair)

12/01/2017

Remember where your food comes from. Remember the hands that toiled for you....

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Bagpipes

A Wedding Without a Bagpipe is Like a Funeral

10/12/2016

Bagpiping provides a route straight to the heart of another culture....

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Look Again: The Way of the Morris

03/10/2016

Forget the decades of Pythonesque ribbing, Morris dancing is deep rooted folk ritual...

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A Decade of ‘Delics: Shroom, Ten Years On

20/09/2016

Ten years later, the cultural history of the magic mushroom still gathers fans and furore...

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windvane by StillWorksImagery

Smell the air and rub the sky

12/06/2015

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. ...

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mushroom by freedigital and papaija2008

Walking With Plants

22/12/2014

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

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Ronald Hutton

Pagan Britain (and Ronald Hutton)

05/11/2014

Qithin the generous limits imposed by the evidence you're free to imagine the past how you like....

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troubadours

On Troubadours, Sufism and Robert Graves

28/07/2014

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...

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bluetit by Tambako the Jaguar

On Twitter, Birdsong and Bards

08/05/2014

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

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A picture of a cat footprint in Africa by Jyoti

Scary Monsters

20/02/2014

Fiction is fiction and monsters are not predators: they're monsters. As such they're human projections, our worst nightmares made flesh. ...

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A picture of a triskele

Drawing Inspiration

07/01/2014

Symbols don't mean anything; rather they are fecund triggers to the imagination that allow meaning to arise through their contemplation....

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An illustration of a ley line

Dragon Paths and Pilgrimages

02/01/2014

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

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Freedigitalphotos.net/Worakit Sirijinda

Druids, Magic Mushrooms and Cultural Memory

10/10/2013

Iron Age Druids might have known about and used magic mushrooms even if there's no way of testing it....

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A picture of the Green Man

Bosky Man Visits Scarfolk

04/07/2013

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

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Notes from the Noosphere

13/03/2013

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

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Jean Michel Veillon

Brythonic Gyrations

13/02/2013

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

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reeds

Evolution of a Classic [Folk Music]

23/01/2013

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....

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Locomotion

26/12/2012

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...

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Go Fly a Kite

14/12/2012

And don't kites just lend themselves to metaphor? They punctuate the sky, return it to a human scale. They hug the wind. Our minds can't help but follow them up into the empyrean; watching them, we...

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Freedigitalphotos.net/Worakit Sirijinda

The Tribes of Britain

21/11/2012

To be an activist is to suffer defeat after defeat after defeat. Without spirituality to recharge and revive us the danger is we fall into bitterness or despair or worse, self-righteousness. ...

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Trouble at t’Mill: Radio 2 Axe Mike Harding

31/10/2012

Folk. An English lower middle-class museum music. Ouch....

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