{HBR 44} Music, Magic and Business with Sharon Knight

Holistic Business Radio – The Podcast of the Love and Money Revolution – with Andy Dolph and Rhiannon Llewellyn

Musician and weaver of magic Sharon Knight is our guest this week. She talks with Andy about her music and how she creates it, the spirituality which drives her music and the business of being a musician. Sharon's Website: http://www.sharonknight.net/ (go listen to her music there for free!) Sharon's Blog: http://www.sharonknight.net/blog/ Scroll down for show notes! We love your feedback! Please let us know what you think – email us at [e-mail], or leave us a comment below. If you’re not subscribed, please join us! How to subscribe: Most people subscribe to podcasts in iTunes; click the button to view the podcast in iTunes. Show notes from this episode with Sharon Knight: Sharon Knight has a unique description of her music: Neofolk Romantique. It started out as Celtic-inspired music. She learned on Celtic music, but over time she started writing more of her own songs which were inspired by Mythology. The staunch Celtic traditionalists called her out on it, so she decided to create her own genre. And there we have Neofolk Romantique. It’s Celtic-inspired and folk rock based, drawing on a lot of romance and Old World legends. She just decided on the description for this genre a few years ago while working on a project that’s due for release any day now. The pre-release version is available now. The pre-release was put out there to raise funds for this upcoming project. The pre-release is more intimate because it’s just her and her husband and music/business partner, Winter, as a duet. The newer project will include guest musicians and will be more fleshed-out. On the pre-lease, Winter plays acoustic guitar, and Sharon plays octave mandolin (larger and tuned an octave lower than a regular mandolin), acoustic guitar and an Irish drum called a bodhrán (pronounced similarly to boron). Sharon and Winter both sing on the CD. There are a couple of guest musicians on the pre-lease, but most of the music is Sharon and Winter. In the new, full version, there will be several guest musicians—their long-term collaborator, Caith Threefires will be playing a lot of different instruments from the mandolin family; he also plays keyboard and bass. A cellist will be sitting in. There will be several new songs, and some of the songs from the pre-lease will be removed. There will be bagpipes and some flutes and a dobro. It will still be acoustic, but the sound will be more fleshed-out. They have a darker, harder version of their sound in their band called Pandemonaeon. It’s formulated like an electric rock band, but it’s a very different sound. She describes it as Dead Can Dance mixed with hard rock and a little bit of metal, but the Folk influence is still there. She finds that their acoustic stuff is more well-known than their harder, electric stuff. This isn’t surprising because the acoustic music reaches the New Age and Neo-Pagan world where most of their fans come from. Sharon gives a broad description of Paganism: an earth-centered spirituality in which people live harmoniously with Nature and perform rituals to celebrate different cycles of the year. She says that there are Reconstructionist movements that try to reconstruct the pre-Christian thing, people who are trying to recreate, as close as possible, how the rituals were done before Christianity. Andy brings up the point that people tend to strongly disagree over what Pagan Reconstructionism really is, because how can any of us really know how things were done back then? Then there are people who want to recreate the meaning of it but realize that because we’re not living in that ancient world any more, things don’t really mean the same thing. Sharon says that most people she knows do a really good job of finding balance. That’s the place she comes from: Being inspired by some of the ancient traditions to live in harmony with Nature but making it relevant in our society as modern people.