Jordann Funk released witch folk single ‘the great god pan (is not dead)’ on Spirit House Records Today!

Hudson Valley, NY-based artist Jordann Funk has released her “witch folk” single the great god pan (is not dead) with Spirit House Records on September 15. This single is part of Funk’s upcoming debut album, of beast and bone, to be released by Spirit House Records on October 13. It follows the single ‘tsuga.’

This song emerged from my obsession with the “beasts” of our society.  I traced the roots of the Christian “devil” back to the great god Pan, and more inclusively, the archetypal ‘horned god’ that arises in cultures world-world.  Pan was the epitome of the feral— the relentless wild life-force out of which humanity sprung.  So to tame and refine humans away from their animal nature, Pan became the antithesis of ‘the civil’ and was pronounced dead: banned to be idolized inside the walls of the city.  It came to be that any civil person in the presence of Pan, or hearing his song, entered a terrorized state of ‘panikos’, or panic, as the human body tried to remember its feral roots but the civilized mind barred it from doing so.

It was Halloween, and I was dressed as “my ancestor”:  a Pennsylvania Dutch mennonite woman in traditional bonnet and dress.  Embodying this character, I imagined a story in which, in the throes of depression, I began to question the traditional norms of my religious and societal structure, so “I asked their devil for the truth.”  She calls in Pan, and this song followed suit.  A few months later, I recorded the song in the Berkshires with Michael Lesko, and he worked to produce it.