Going For A Song: Early Days 6

The next stage of my musical journey coincided with the blooming of the folk scene in Toronto, and elsewhere in North
America. I began to sing in folk clubs, that at the time, as low paying as they were, began to show me that singing in public
places did not have to be a masochistic experience, that you gritted your teeth and endured, while customers, many with their backs turned to you, would talk loudly, and treat what you were offering as "back ground' music. In these usually tiny,
candle lit places, people would actually come to listen to the person on stage. For me this was a very welcome development,
although with my still strong Guyana accent, and a tendency for Caribbean rythmns to creep into the songs I sang, I am sure
some of the folk purists must have smiled at my renditions of "She's like a swallow" or "Come all ye fair and tender ladies".
Although I felt very much like an outsider on this scene, listening to visiting song-writers from New York and elsewhere,
planted the seed in me, that I too could write songs, if I made the effort. Singing in bars with all the indifference you had to deal with there, somehow, never promoted this notion in me. But the folk scene was imperfect like all scenes. It had its
snobbery, paid very little, and like the cocktail bars that dealt in wet intoxicants, wittingly or unwittingly, in some of its venues, provided places where those in need of dry mood changers, could connect with suppliers who lurked in the midst
of those, who came only to listen to the music....................Quester.