Guests of Honor: Loewenthal

Silva wrote her first songs when she was 7 years old – and thought everyone did. Strange, actually, because she’s basically a Muggle-born girl when it comes to music. In contrast to Kjenjo, whose parents met in a classical choir and where piano or flute music resounded almost continuously through the house. Basically, for him there were only two possibilities: Go crazy or become a musician yourself. Kjenjo has managed both. His mother was a flute teacher – and so Kjenjo received flute lessons from childhood on, certainly completely voluntarily. His mother was very surprised when she found out after 5 years that he still couldn’t read music – he just played everything by heart. The flute instructions and one year of guitar lessons paved the way for a career as a singer and bodhrán player. Well, he plays a little bit of guitar too, fortunately the lessons didn’t get rid of that. Encouraged by this, he completed an education in stage chatter with the vegetarian band Cha Feóil. Later he refined this high art in his funfolk project Folk Factory. Silva rediscovered her musical talent at the age of 13 and realized that she could only fulfill her dream of being in a band if she learned to play an instrument first. With the help of a guitar rescued from the attic and Peter Bursch’s grandiose self-help materials, she resolutely put this into practice. At that time she had no idea that singing would one day become her main instrument. Peter also sang on the accompanying CD, so she thought that this was the way it should be. This accident she later turned into purpose by taking actual singing lessons. Until then she became the horror of all parties with her first band “Birds in the Nuclear Power Plant” and then started to write her own songs for self-therapeutic reasons. A more serious project with another songwriter followed and existed for many years, who encouraged her to continue with her singing. Eventually she met Peredar – and Thesilée, who under the guise of wanting to do authors’ evenings with her, took her into the fantasy-coloured and star-spangled world of film. And so her fate was sealed.

© Schattenweber; Foto: Michael Meister

Silva and Kjenjo met at a Filkcon in 2002 and their plan to make music together almost failed because of the distance (450 km) between them. Fortunately Kjenjo had no idea where Krefeld was and prophylactically claimed: “Oh, that’s not far!” Meanwhile the two have been together for almost 18 years and live in an ivy-covered cottage in Lüneburg, where they teach guitar and singing. Over the years they have made the country insecure with various music projects. Lord Landless with Peredar and Thesilée became so famous that the waves of the Atlantic Ocean carried them to the Confluence on their world tour all the way to completely sold out Pittsburgh. Smaller successes they celebrated with their band Schattenweber in the medieval scene. Among others there was the festival Mediaval, where In Extremo played as their support band…or was it the other way round? But you all know that. Almost epic were the two CD release parties, where something always went gloriously wrong. At the first one Silva temporarily lost her voice, at the second one the CD was not yet finished. They had fun nevertheless – or even more so – especially with the wonderful choir, at least 50% of which was made up of Filkers. Because the two have always remained true to the filk roots of their first encounter. What the other shadow weavers never knew – with the project disguised as “Fantasyfolk” Kjenjo and Silva pursued the perfidious plan to achieve world domination by means of Filk, which unfortunately failed due to lack of provisions (Where did all the chocolate go?) and missing luck with the dice (And again the 20…) In the meantime they have recovered from that fiasco and devote themselves to less dangerous things – like juggling with fuel rods, magic and journeys into the inner world of mankind.

Das Frühlingsfest der Filksmusik