This Week's Brooklyn Calendar of Events

The Johnson Girls is an energetic all-woman mostly a cappella group performing folk music with an emphasis on songs of the sea and shore.  Each member of the group, Joy Bennett, Alison Kelley, Bonnie Milner, and Dierdre Murtha, brings a specialty and style to the ensemble.  The Johnson Girls’ extensive repertoire of both traditional and contemporary music includes songs with an Afro-Caribbean influence, songs of the inland waterways, of fishing, mining, Irish, Anglo-American, Italian and French Canadian ballads and work songs, and much more.  With a sound that has been called “exciting”, “haunting”, “uplifting”, and “full of harmony”, the Johnson Girls give “hair-raising” performances of powerhouse chanteys, tender ballads and just plain fun songs, bringing audiences to their feet wherever they go.

Sea music may well have been the first “world music.”  Ships’ crew members from many countries were heavily influenced by the music they heard from one another.  Their work songs and other shipboard music incorporated the different rhythms and styles from their own often diverse cultures as well as those they encountered during their voyages.  The Johnson Girls came together in 1997 following the Mystic Seaport Sea Music festival to burst through the barrier of this previously male dominated genre.

The Folk Music Society of New York, Inc. hosts concerts for music lovers who can relax and listen, sing along on the chorus, or dance in the aisles to the best of traditional music. For more information go online to www.folkmusicny.org.