Folk Club Bonn Reawakens IN JULY 02.07.21!

Dear Folk Clubbers, you may have gleaned from the main text of this Blog and from the RHS (right hand side) of the Blog, that things are definitely moving,there is a definite undercurrent in the soil beneath the trees and thank goodness live music is slowly, but definitely, coming back again on the radar to greet us after an unsufferably long absence due to COVID-19 restrictions. There is now suddenly much more live music on offer again outdoors. For more information read on this blog. Indeed, even Folk Club Bonn, after having its very last "normal" indoor meeting in Dotty's Bar indoors in April 2020 is looking to rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. We had two FCB Lite meetings outside below Dotty's Bar on the hockey pitch behind the building in both September and October last year. Weather-wise it was perhaps a little late in the season to go outdoors and the nights were drawing in, but hey! we discovered that we even had floodlights when it became dark! This year, thanks to the recent greatly reduced incidence rate we are already contemplating an outdoor meet on Friday evening at 19:30 hrs on 02.07.21 so do feel free to come along and remember what live music sounds like once again. I managed to experience some last Sunday afternoon in the Haus Carstanjan arboretum summer festival with the Tree Guardians. I must confess, it was very inspiring and most uplifting. Stayed tuned for more information and if you wish to receive a monthly E-mail update on what is happening in Folk Club Bonn please send an E-mail to FolkClubBonn at Gmail.com The following photo is courtesy of John Hurd from 3SongsBonn

This was last Sunday afternoon at the Tree Guardian's annual festival in the arboretum alongside Haus Carstanjen alongside the Rhine in Plittersdorf. Pre-COVID-19 I would have been somewhat sceptical about being able to put on a show like this without access to mains electricity. Thanks to the good offices of John Hay who invested heavily in battery powered amplifiers early on in the COVID-19 crisis, what happened last Sunday was thankfully possible. Thanks for that John Hay and this is also enabling Folk Club Bonn to continue to play and function, and continue to play and function outdoors. This is indeed outside of the Folk Club Bonn's initial remit as a purely acoustic live music indoor folk club. As the economist John Maynard Keynes once said, "When facts change I change my opinions." Now it seems that "out of adversity comes opportunity!" We have been gathering a bit of experience, paying our respective dues, so that Folk Club Bonn, can rise up again. Please come along again on Friday 02.07.21 at 19:30 hrs You will all be glad to know that since COVID-19 "knee-capped" us all in April 2020 we have held three folk club Bonn meetings with full traceability and following all of the restrictions, AND we have not lost a folk clubber yet to COVID-19 and we do not wish to change this record. If you do come along please respect spatial distancing and if you feel happier with a mask, that's fine. If you have underlying health conditions and you are NOT yet fully vaccinated, please for your own health, consider staying away. We consider the risk from aerosol transmission outdoors to be minimal, but do remember that the Delta-4 variant is probably around 200% more infectious that the original COVID-19 virus, and the Delta-4 variant IS growing legs, it's just a metter of time, not if, but simply when. We do not wish any of you any harm but we do wish that you prosper and remember how to smile again, and listen and sing again. "Spatial distancing" IS currently important, but "social distancing" is really not a human condition, it never was and really never will be! So please ALL of you stay safe, and if you can possibly justify it, do come along and enjoy yourselves in a way that human beings have been doing, not just for decades, or centuries or for millenia, after a long week of work, toil or hunt, just get together with family and friends on a Friday evening and chew the cud, reflect on life, have a drink or two, and hear a true story or two or three, hear and sing a few songs, and smile a little more often than you normally do during the rest of the week. After all, this is really what "life" and a "folk club" is quintessentially all about on a Friday night. Welcome back, and please enjoy your newly found freedoms again in a safe environment. Perhaps, we will even begin to appreciate again, those many wonderful things that we never knew that we really ever had, before we began to so recently miss and mourn them.