Online Offerings
Virtual courses exploring traditional and contemporary songs from Appalachia and the Anglo-Celtic Isles. Each course pairs song learning with deep research into the folklore, history, and ancestral wisdom behind the music.
All courses hosted in Saro Sings, my online community for folk song and tradition.
Singing the Wheel of the Year:
Explore the songs and traditions of the Wheel of the Year, a neo-pagan ritual calendar drawn from Neolithic, Celtic and Germanic folkways. Each class introduces entrancing traditional and contemporary songs to bring you closer to the deities and ritual activities of the seasons. Essays provided with each song provide robust research and folklore to give you a thorough grasp of each holiday as it has been observed in England, Scotland and Ireland.
Badass Women in Folk Song:
Learn a one-of-a-kind collection of folk songs about witches, warriors and witty women from the Anglo-Celtic Isles and beyond! In this course, we learn ballads and folk songs spanning 400+ years of history, exploring themes of magical women in folklore, women as soldiers and sailors, reproductive autonomy, working women’s songs and more. Along the way, you’ll learn about the histories, folklore, and real people behind the songs- and become a carrier (and creator!) of these songs yourself.
The Unquiet Grave: Wisdom and Songs from Scotland and Appalachia to Help Us Mourn & Set the Dead Free:
Beliefs about the afterlife, practices of care for the spirits of the dead, and customs for mourning have always been a central part of ancestral wisdom, yet we are often disconnected from these folkways in our modern culture. In The Unquiet Grave, we learn from a variety of folklorists, singers and storytellers who reconnect us with this knowledge as it’s been practiced in Scotland and descendant traditions in Appalachia.