Bill, As someone who played lute & cittern at the California Renaissance Faires in their prime, this is not new news. This genre of period street fair started with the North & Southern California fairs which were originally run by the same people. When it was time for them to retire they sold the business and I think similar things have happened to other faires in the US. There is a magazine called Renaissance that is aimed at faire attendees and merchants - lots of ads for costumes. When I started at the Northern California Faire one of the acts that drew a lot of people was the belly dance troop, but at the same time there was a shawm & sackbut band that had great costumes and sounded great too. As the years went by the pay went down and more Celtic music came in along with a ban on guitars as not being from the right period (and a ban on Birkenstocks as well for the same reason).
I'm not sure if the changing fashions of Renaissance Faire entertainment is an indication of lack of interest in the lute. The faires were always awful places to play - hot, dusty and VERY noisy. Nancy Carlin At 01:32 PM 4/4/2007, bill kilpatrick wrote: >in talking to some early musicians in california i >hear that ren-faire type venues for early music are >not what they used to be. i've noticed recently that >more lutes are being put up for auction with a >three-figure asking price - as opposed to 4 - and >today's check of "altro strumenti musicali" on italian >ebay reveals that a pricey, medieval viella (bowed), 4 >gironde and 2 salterio are on the block. > >rough winter was it, generally? dipping into the seed >corn? > >subsequently see that the viella was put up for >auction by the luthier who made it - which is >indicative in itself as it's ... ebay. > >http://earlymusiccharango.blogspot.com/ > > > >___________________________________________________________ >The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email >address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html Nancy Carlin Associates P.O. Box 6499 Concord, CA 94524 USA phone 925/686-5800 fax 925/680-2582 web site - www.nancycarlinassociates.com Administrator THE LUTE SOCIETY OF AMERICA web site - http://LuteSocietyofAmerica.org --