Spirit Wing

On Saturday a friend and I traveled to the Oxford Friends Meeting to listen to a quartet called Spirit Wing as part of the Friends Folk Club series. It's hard to describe Spirit Wing, which hails from Phoenixville: the bulk of the show was Native American-inspired music, but they also played country music, bluegrass and reggae. It blew my mind just a little when the group who had just done a traditional longhouse social dance segued into an impassioned version of George Gershwin's "Summertime," a tropical steel-drum number and a very funny song called "Counting Coup on the Highway" (let's just say the band isn't fond of Volvos).

No matter what the musical genre, though, the group's message was a wholesome one of respect for nature (they talked about how exciting it is to see crawfish back in the Schuylkill River after a long hiatus) and the importance of keeping traditions alive and expressing gratitude for peace, family and friends. They did a fun show (including a sing-along that involved the audience members making crow noises -- yes, of course I joined in!) and kept both kids and adults entertained.
Oxford Meeting is a nice venue (sorry about tracking in all those yellow gingko leaves!), though I'm not sure the benches were designed with the human body in mind. At intermission they had excellent baked goods and I browsed through a book called "Quaker Economics."