Pass-Zine, Vol. 1: Women of Folk by Club Passim

vol 1 - May 2022

Sophie Severs

About Club Passim.............3 About the Author..............4 Pass-Zine Theme: Women of Folk..........................5 Who's featured?...............6 Rachel Sumner..............7 Grace Givertz..............11 Miriam Elhajli.............15 The Passim Discovery Series...19 Senie Hunt.................20 Luke Tobin.................21 Passim Picks..................22 Get Involved..................23

The mission of Passim is to provide truly exceptional and interactive live musical experiences for both performers and audiences, to nurture artists at all stages of their career, and to build a vibrant music community. We do so through our legendary listening venue, music school, artist grants and community programs. As a nonprofit since 1994, Passim carries on the heritage of our predecessors—the historic Club 47 (1958-1968) and for-profit Passim (1969-1994). We cultivate a diverse mix of musical traditions, where the emphasis is on the relationship between performers and audience and teachers and students. Located in Harvard Square, Passim serves Cambridge and the broader region by featuring local, national and international artists. Our ultimate goal is to help the performance arts flourish and thereby enrich the lives of members of our community. Passim acknowledges that we stand on the traditional land of the Massachusett Peoples, and want to honor their land and people past and present.

Sophie Severs is a rising sophomore and journalism major at Emerson College, with a double minor in music history/culture and podcasting/streaming/radio.

Growing up in North Carolina surrounded by a lively folk scene hammered an undying love for folk music in her that she has rediscovered at Club Passim.

And while she might not have been lended much in the musically-gifted department, she has found a way to nurture that appreciation, combining it with her creative outlet of choice: writing.

View Sophie's portfolio here!

*Special thanks to Minna AbdelGawad for editing the Zine pieces!

Sophie Severs

Happy May! Thanks for picking up a "Pass-Zine"! This Zine series is a new initiative that I am pioneering to shed light on some of the amazing performers coming to Passim! This month's Zine highlights three wonderful female musicians coming to the club in June (next month), and thus, the theme is "Women of Folk"! Women of folk have often been cast to the side, and upstaged by their male counterparts. Their contributions have at times been ignored, but in all reality they are more than deserving of being celebrated as legitimate change makers and purveyors of sweet, sweet music. I hope that you'll have as much fun reading about these amazing women as I did talking to them!

- Sophie Severs

Rachel Sumner Performing at Passim with her band, Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light, with Brittany Ann Tranbaugh opening on: Saturday, June 4th @ 8pm

Grace Givertz Performing at Passim with Brennan Wedl on: Sunday, June 19th @ 7pm

Miriam Elhajli Performing at Passim on: Wednesday, June 22nd @ 8pm

Rachel Sumner is Club Passim’s resident renaissance woman. This enchanting musician leads her band, Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light, is a sound technician at Passim, selfproduces her entire discography, and is Passim’s very own school of music manager. Though she is pulled in so many different directions, Sumner seems to do it all with no trouble . Sumner’s childhood was full of music. Long, afternoon car rides would be spent listening to James Taylor and Jackson Browne, and weekdays were filled with choir practice and flute lessons. “Music was a very natural thing for me to be drawn to,” she confesses. She followed her passion for music straight to Berklee college of Music in Boston, and has remained in the city ever since. The city is an alluring hub for folk music of all kinds, as Berklee and Club Passim have become two mainstays of the Boston folk scene. Sumner asserts, “At Berklee, everyone is cycling through their time there. [...] It's little moments, little time bubbles where genres pop up.” Sometimes the city will be teeming with music that pulls inspiration from bluegrass, or Celtic traditional songs—you never know what you’ll hear when it comes to the city’s ever-changing folk scene. Though Sumner proudly engages within the bluegrass-folk and singer-songwriter space, that trajectory was not always her plan.

She entered college with a classical orchestral background and an original interest in film scoring, though quickly found that those professions posed various challenges. She recalls witnessing a director’s treatment of a well-respected and well-known composer, and “had this thought: if this man who has scored hundreds of movies and has been working in Hollywood for thirty plus years has to suck up to the director like this, I have no chance as a young person and as a woman in a scene that is overrun with dudes.” “I found myself edging more toward songwriting,” she remembers, “There's a creative aspect to it. I really love orchestration and the idea of it, and I found a love for producing and arranging. I utilize those skills that I gained when I was concentrating on becoming an orchestrator. I'm really thankful for that experience, [...] but I feel safer as a songwriter and a performer.” After this realization, Sumner immersed herself within the Bluegrass and folk-roots scene at Berklee. Her time there was spent singing Hazel & Alice songs with her classmate, Molly Tuttle, and playing in jam circles with various other talented musicians. “The roots scene at Berklee was super vibrant. [It] was such a refreshing change from being in the classical work where everything felt a little stale. Here was a world where everything was social.”

Sumner is now a full-time independent musician, and plays with her band, Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light. Collaboration is something that all artists do at some point during their careers, and for Sumner, it has been one of the greatest joys. “You're not always on the same page as everybody and that's okay,” she confesses, “That's part of what makes the band experience so colorful, so interesting. It can take you places that you never thought you would go before. It can push you in ways you never thought that you could be pushed.” Sumner brings her writings to the band, and typically walks away with a fully flushed-out melody thanks to her bandmates’ skillful insight. Sumner has a knack for songwriting, as her song, “Radium Girls (Curie Eleison)” is the official 2022 Lennon Award Winner the Folk category, and is moving on to the final round for Song of the Year. The song is a chilling tune describing the painful suffering that many women faced working in factories during the 1920s. Sumner first heard about the radium girls a few years back, inspired to learn more after hearing the word “undark” in Joanna Newsom’s song, “Time, as a Symptom.” The radium girls were women who worked in the Ingersoll Factory in New Jersey painting alarm clocks during the 1920s. The girls were poisoned by radioactive materials that the glowing “undark” paint had in it, and suffered many ailments as a result, with many dying due to their poisoning. “I was completely taken with their story, just horrified—and also horrified at the fact that I had never heard of them,” Sumner recalls. Sumner weaved a clever play on words throughout the song, replacing the classic “Kyrie Eleison” phrase (meaning, “Lord, have mercy”), with “Curie Eleison,” calling back to Marie Curie’s discovery of radium. “That perfectly encapsulates the science versus religion, natural world versus manmade [debate],” Sumner says.

She closes out the song in a chilling manner, singing, “To this day no one can say how many lives were lost/Had they been sooner taken seriously it might have cut the cost/You may claim women have been long-since elevated in this world-/But how can that be? Our ashes still speak louder than our words…” Sumner is a woman who will continue to accomplish whatever she puts her mind to. “You can do whatever you want; you can write a Broadway musical, [...] you can write songs for yourself, and for different settings,” she proudly asserts. She wishes to “follow the muse wherever it takes me.” Rest assured, Sumner will continue to follow the muse wherever it goes. Passim is lucky to have someone like Sumner on our side, and the music world is even luckier to be graced with her talent.

Keep Up with Rachel: Instagram: @rtsumner Twitter: @rtsumner

Rachel's Website

Facebook: Rachel Sumner YouTube: Rachel Sumner

Streamable on Spotify, Bandcamp & Apple Music

“Folk isn't stale—you just need some melanin.” These words come straight from the mind of one Grace Givertz, a Boston-based indie-folk musician. Givertz is a passionate force of raw artistry, a bundle of energy who is sure to charm anyone she meets with her cheerful laugh and encouraging smile. Music is the only thing on Earth that continually serves to excite and invigorate Givertz. “I don't find fulfillment in anything like I do with music,” she confesses, “I know it's what I meant to do, and I want to do it full time.” Givertz has always gravitated toward participating within the sphere of folk music. While her initial interest in the folk genre might have been piqued by the banjo, as Givertz became more acquainted with the genre, she found, “the biggest thing with folk music is that it is all storytelling.” Especially as a Black musician in America, there is a lot of storytelling that comes along with our ancestry and the things that we've been through,” she exclaims, "They didn't write books about us when we were coming into this country. We only had songs.”

It is Givertz’s highest honor to help keep the memory of her ancestors alive by sharing her music with the rest of the world. “It just makes sense that it was put in my soul because it was what I was meant to do,” she proudly asserts, “It was something that was non-negotiable.”

Many folk artists of marginalized identities have learned to strike a proper balance between wanting to share their stories with the world, and feeling like their stories have to be exploited and tokenized in order to be heard. Givertz has also grappled with this struggle, “There have been times that I felt like my voice wasn't important. [...] It's hard to get out of that specific mindset of: people want to hear my voice now because it's trendy, or because they put BLM in their tagline,” she confesses. Givertz is not someone who can be used in in efforts to signal good morals—she is purely a person writing about all that she has experienced. “I'm not doing this to profit off my trauma,” she asserts, “but I'm also not doing this just because I'm being asked to do it. I prefer to make music about things that I know and experience, and I have been a disabled Black woman for my entire life.”

Givertz is unwavering in her assertion that music should be accessible for everyone. As a self-taught musician, Givertz has always been eager to share what she has learned with others, and to in turn, learn new things from them. In the industry today, exorbitant paywalls stop young artists from receiving the training that will help them “make it” in the music world. Many people are not fortunate enough to be able to pay for private lessons, and to enroll in prestigious music institutions that equip them with the skills to survive and thrive.

Givertz herself was met by a financial roadblock after Berklee School of Music made an error in regards to her scholarship money after a month of being enrolled at the institution. The school would force Givertz to either pay tuition in full or withdraw from the school—with the latter being her only option at the time. “It's really hard for people who are self taught—or want to be self taught—to even have the motivation to want to do anything,” Givertz notes, “because the people that they look up to [typically] say: 'um, you should just learn it yourself.'” For Givertz, sharing is truly caring. She advises, “If you are lucky and privileged enough to have a formal music education, don't hesitate from sharing what you know. Obviously not in a way that is demeaning or belittling, but definitely ask [...]: ‘What can I do on even a small scale that could support someone?'” Givertz is in good company—many famous musicians throughout history were self-taught: Jimi Hendrix, Dizzy Gillespie, Elizabeth Cotten, to name a few. Just because Givertz does not have years of formal training under her belt does not mean she is any less talented than any of her peers—if anything, it is a testament to her determination and passion for her craft. Givertz wears the selftaught badge with pride, as she emphatically states, “I hope to be an advocate for selftaught musicians because we are here.” Nothing can stop Givertz from pursuing what she loves to do. She has found her place within Boston’s music scene through her continual endeavors to give back to the community in whatever capacity she can. Givertz is a champion of authenticity, whose main goal is to develop and nourish meaningful connections with the people she is surrounded by.

After all, in any DIY music scene, community collaboration and support is paramount to a successful career. “That's something that is really huge when you're doing DIY, you can't expect anything if you're not going to put something back into the community,” Givertz points out. “A lot of people get stuck. They [wonder], ‘Why isn't anything happening?’” One then has to reflect and ask: “Are you going to shows? Are you asking other artists how you can be helpful? Are you engaging with other artists? It's not something that a lot of people realize is very community based,” Givertz explains. With her beloved banjo, “Libba” under her arm, and an eager smile on her face, Givertz is sure to take the world by storm with her authentic artistry and passion for creation. She will continue to devote her work toward protecting genres like folk, “and amplifying the voices that created them,” constantly working toward a more diverse and accepting music scene.

Keep Up with Grace: Instagram: @gracegivertz Facebook: Grace Givertz Twitter: @gracegivertz YouTube: Grace Givertz Streamable on Spotify, Bandcamp & Apple Music

Grace's Website

For Miriam Elhajli, music is a lifestyle. Elhajli grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, watching local musicians and buskers perform in Harvard square. She would spend her days entranced by all of the performances that took place. “That's where I learned about a lot of ballads and Irish music and the songwriter community,” she recalls. At home, Elhajli was always singing and playing with her family. “Every time the family gets together, we all play music and sing folk songs. That's just a part of daily life in many cultures,” she describes. Through her music, Elhajli delves into herself and her roots, described on her Bandcamp page as a “folk singer, composer-improviser, and musicologist whose work is influenced by the rich musical traditions of her Venezuelan, Moroccan and North American heritage.” For Elhajli, creating music is promoting a “shared language” of sorts. The music one creates is embedded within the culture and land of the areas of where one is writing. Traditional music is, for instance, “songs that are of the Earth,” Elhajli states, “Sometimes I think [...] the land composed the songs and we are the vessels to sing them.”

Though it is the music of the people and their land, folk music as a genre has been reinterpreted by the music industry world to signify an archetype of performance. Elhajli describes that “the life lived was what created the music, and now we think if we wear something or act a certain way then we embody the style of music, but life comes first. ” There is much more to folk than meets the eye. So many different iterations of “folk” exist in the world, finding their roots in the music of so many different cultures and the experiences of so many people. Elhajli has had to learn the ropes of being an independent artist. “When I was younger I thought you had a label and you got signed and then you went on tour,” she recounts, “[...] I realized all of these structures have historically exploited musicians. The record label would be nothing without the musicians, they are pretty much like investment banks. [...] They invest in them and they want their return.” The conception that one has to be signed to a label in order to succeed is omnipresent within the music industry today. Elhajli broke out of this thinking when she moved to New York City at age 21. She recalls, “I just started to play and I met a community. It was a genuine, sincere one that was poets and writers and photographers and painters and very creative people that are doing very contemporary art. I realized we didn't really need a label” to make art, and that was so freeing for her.

Elhajli chose to instead take the reins over her own art, producing both of her records on her own label, Numina Records. Her sophomore album, The Uncertainty of Signs, was released February 22, 2022, and Elhajli confirms, “It would be nothing without the incredible musicians I worked on this project with. It's a labor of love. One should always be independent at any part of their career to understand the ins and outs of every single part of what it takes to make their mediums.” The Uncertainty of Signs is based on song, improvisation, and perhaps most of all, collaboration. The musicians Elhajli worked with on the record have extensive backgrounds in jazz, gospel and folk music that helped flush the record out and give it its multifaceted sound. Elhajli describes collaboration as being “like a big pot of soup. Everyone's contributing their own spice, but you as the chef need to know what that spice is going to do to the overall taste. You need to be sort of two steps ahead, because every ingredient you're going to add in is gonna shift the balance.” Making music is all about the soul one pours into it. Elhajli confirms, “The best music that I love, regardless of genre, is done with soul, and you can tell—that's folk music to me.”

The most important thing for Elhajli is to “do things with depth, and acknowledge our place within the space, not to claim that we have ownership or to appropriate, just to understand.” We are vessels for music and the lessons that it purveys. “The commercialization and the sort of commodification of music makes it into an object, and takes away its context,” Elhajli asserts “The music falls flat. We need to as musicians and artists in any medium, do our research, have conversations, and find the roots again.”

Elhajli herself has plenty of soul to share with the world. Her art is a way for her to explore more of herself, and a way for her to spread the love that she feels so deeply. “The music is the distillation of the light,” she asserts, Through her work, she leaves behind a footprint of light and love; she sees her music “as a form of documentation of what it means to just be this one very insignificant, and magnificent human life.” For Elhajli, the future is full of possibilities. “Maybe I'll become a journalist, maybe I'll become a professional walker. I have no idea.” The options in this life are limitless, but if one thing is for sure, Elhajli will never be done exploring and spreading the light.

Keep Up with Miriam: Instagram: @miriamelhajli Facebook: Miriam Elhajli YouTube: Miriam Elhajli Streamable on Spotify, Bandcamp & Apple Music

Miriam's Website

The Discovery Series is a monthly event sponsored by Nine Athens Music to bring new artists into the Passim community. Through the Discovery Series, we provide a platform to connect new artists with a music-loving audience. These artists may be brand new to the club, or might have performed at our campfire festivals, but the Discovery Series puts these artists in a room filled with our dedicated members.

Passim Discovery Series, May 9

Senie Hunt is a self-taught, singer-songwriter and percussive guitarist adopted from Sierra Leone. He brought with him an inherent passion for West African rhythms and percussion. Senie used djembe drumming as a creative outlet to process the traumas of his early childhood during Sierra Leone’s Diamond wars. Senie’s playing is eclectic, powerful and artfully unique. This original approach and performance style, especially his unique percussion and live looping, sets Senie apart from other acoustic guitarists. Senie composes continuously and has a large body of work for one so young. In 2020, he was awarded the Innovators award at the GSM Music Awards for his guitar mastery, and was nominated for best male act of the year by the New England Music Awards in 2021.

Passim Discovery Series, May 9

Luke Tobin is a singer-songwriter based in North Adams, Massachusetts. After his first songwriting experience writing a song for class in 5th grade, he embarked on his serious musical career in the 6th grade. Tobin's current discography is full of a soft and soothing acoustic folk sound that acts as a balm for any worry that one might have.

The Passim Staff's Favorite Songs from Female folk artists! Jim Wooster, Executive Director - Cheryl Wheeler, “When Fall Comes to New England” Matt Smith, Managing Director - Amythyst Kiah, “Black Myself” Abby Altman, Club Manager - Lori McKenna, "The Time I've Wasted" Summer McCall, Marketing & Membership Manager Joni Mitchell, "California" Rachel Sumner, School of Music Manager - Aurora Birch, "Woman" John Bechard, Passim School of Music Desk - Katell Keineig, "O Seasons" Maddy Simpson, Administrative Coordinator - Haley Heynderickx, "No Face" Riley Greenstein, Box Office - Jensen McRae, "Make You Proud" Zoe Levitt, Server - Celia Woodsmith (of Della Mae), "Aged Pine" Casey Murray, Stream Technician - Olivia Chaney, "Dragonfly" Kayla Blackburn, Stream Technician - Patty Griffin, “Chief” Sophie Severs, Zine Author - Janis Ian, "At Seventeen"

Listen to our full playlist on Spotify, including even more amazing women of folk!

Become a member! Your support allows Passim to: Present a diverse group of wellknown and emerging artists who truly inspire their audiences Develop new artists as they finetune their craft Present free, outdoor music events throughout the city Help guarantee the health and efficiency of a truly legendary institution

We couldn't do what we do without your support ! Learn more at Passim.org

Keep up with all things Passim 💻 Website: Passim.org 📸 Instagram: @Clubpassim 👥 Facebook: Club Passim 🐦 Twitter: @Clubpassim 📹 Youtube: Club Passim

Tune in next month for vol. 2 of the PassZine, featuring bands and duos!