Gordon Bok
| Gordon Bok | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 31, 1939 Camden, Maine |
| Genres | folk |
| Occupation(s) | Singer-songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocals, guitar |
| Website | http://www.gordonbok.com |
Gordon Bok (born October 31, 1939) is a folklorist and singer/songwriter who grew up in Camden, Maine.
His first album, self-titled, was produced by Noel Paul Stookey (Paul of Peter, Paul, and Mary) and released in 1965 on the Verve Records Folkways imprint (not to be confused with Moe Asch's Folkways Records). His second album, A Tune for November, was released on Sandy Paton's Connecticut-based Folk-Legacy label in 1970. His association with Folk-Legacy has continued since that time, though his more recent work (from the early 1990s on) has been released on his own label, Timberhead Music. For a long time, he was best known as part of a trio with Ed Trickett and Ann Mayo Muir, Trickett accompanying with the hammered dulcimer and guitar and Muir with the harp and flute.
Bok sings in a rich baritone and plays six-string guitar (both the steel-string acoustic guitar and the nylon-string classical guitar) and 12-string guitar. In his playing of the nylon-string guitar he embraces the tradition of Latin American guitar music. He also plays a self-built instrument he calls the cellamba, a six-string, fretted cello.
As a songwriter, Bok draws on his experience in and around the working boat culture of the Gulf of Maine. He spins into song the diverse voices of fishermen and other sea-folk, crafting a penetrating vignette or a full-fledged ballad-song as the material demands. At times (especially in his best work of the 1970s), he reaches deep into the wealth of sea myth that haunts the North Atlantic. To animate these legends of Selkie-folk, sea fairies and boat spirits, he resorts to freer forms, producing records like Seal Djiril's Hymn, where song and spoken verse are interspersed, or composing cantefables (e.g. "Saben the Woodfitter") in which spoken narrative blends with sudden song-phrasings.
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