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Samhuinn is the old Celtic turn of the year, the night when the wall between this world and the other one goes thin. The Silk Road is where worlds actually crossed. For two thousand years it carried silk and spices west, paper and gunpowder in every direction, and stories and songs that turned up half a world from where they started.This year we are putting the two together, and the join is not as strange as it sounds. The Norse traders the Arabs called the Rus ran the river routes from Scandinavia down to the Caspian and on to Baghdad. A Viking with a pocketful of silver dirhams was a normal thing to meet on the Volga in the tenth century. Which is how a Viking encampment, a set of Highland pipes and a quartet of women playing Arabic and Turkish repertoire end up around the same fire on the same night, on a farm in Albemarle County.
Come for the whole day. Stay for the fire.
The music
Kinnfolk, the husband and wife duo of Josh and Julie Kinn, who met at the Roanoke Irish session and have been playing octave mandolin, bodhrán and close vocal harmony out of the Blue Ridge ever since. They took the Robinson Emerging Artist prize in 2023, which put them on the main stage at Goderich in Ontario, and they have since made the cover of Irish Music Magazine. Their shows run like a kitchen party, which is the correct format for this night.
Femme Celtique, pipes and drums, fresh off the festival circuit and loud enough to be heard across a hayfield. Let Coreyanne Armstrong's haunting bagpipes and the mystic rhythms of Meaghan Fuller's driving percussion weave their spells and summon you to the dance.
Al-Hawanim, which means "the women" in Arabic. Four musicians led by Anne Rasmussen, who has directed the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble at William and Mary since 1994, with three William and Mary alumnae, and several special guests joining them. Their repertoire runs across Arab, Turkish, Persian, Armenian and Greek traditions, played on 'ud, qanun and frame drums. That range is not a coincidence for a festival about a trade road. It is roughly the western half of it.
Høly River, the Richmond duo of Laney Sullivan and Jameson Price, who call what they make Earth Folk and build it out of harmonium, drone and whatever else is to hand. Their newest record was written around the birth of their first child and the loss of people they loved, and it is about the turning of cycles and the hope in a new day. There is no better music for the last night of the old year.
Then the ceremony, led by ceremonialist Jen Waine with musician and sound journeyman Lester Seal.
The Caravanserai: Through Day
Falconry and raptor education, up close. Archery on the field. Viking and Rus encampments, with the people who live in them. Belly dancing with Soraya Jamal. Henna. Tarot and fortune telling. Food from all along the road, from Anatolia to the Himalaya.
And Through Night
Shadow puppetry from Nettle Shirts Puppet Works, the Charlottesville company of Miranda Elliott-Rader, who makes what she calls farm to stage puppetry out of shadow, paper and found things, most of it about nature and mysticism. Shadow theater is how stories actually traveled that road, and it wants darkness, so we are putting it late.
There will be the annual crowning of the Samhuinn spirits, and following our Samhuinn ceremony, a procession to the Hill of the Bees where we shall light our community bonfire and dance with the pipes and drums the ways our ancestors did.
Details
Come in spirited attire if you like, and most people do. Take your inspiration from anywhere along the road and any century you please, real or fantastical, and nobody here is going to check your sources. It will be a field in late October and the event runs rain or shine, so whatever you wear, wear it warm and over boots you do not mind. Mead available from the tasting room all day for those of age. Tickets are $40 for adults, $18 for youths, and kids under 12 are free. Parking is free onsite.
More acts and activities still being added.
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3075 gables run road, Charlottesville, VA, United States, Virginia 22902
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