The Nexus Gulf

If you are a fan of J.R.R, Tolkien’s Middle-earth you have probably wondered what the Elves really sounded like with their “high, clear” voices. We may not be Elves but some among us have beautiful singing voices. Heather Downing is one such gifted child of Middle-earth and for the past several years she has performed her Elvish music as Rehtaeh.

And it appears that hard work and dedication are beginning to pay off for Rehtaeh. The singer has released three CDs, according to her Website. She has sung at Renaissance Festivals, and she collaborates with musicians around the world. She has achieved enough recognition that competing Tolkien events are bidding for her services.

According to a recent interview on Middle-earth Talk Radio, Ms. Rehtaeh has even been to Middle-earth itself — at least, the Middle-earth that is left over from the Peter Jackson “Lord of the Rings” movies. The singer says the Shire in the morning (when you see it in person) is even more fantastic and magical than in the movies.

Rehtaeh will be the special guest the weekend of August 13-15 of Tolkien Moot, a Spokane, WA convention that draws in a small body of role-playing gamers who want to adventure in Middle-earth. Past guests have included some heavy hitters in Tolkien scholarship, including Chris Seeman, Thomas Morwinsky, Michael Martinez, and John D. Rateliff. The guest presentations are open to the public and usually draw larger crowds. The convention also broadcasts its events on the Internet, bringing in even more fans.

Rehtaeh will be singing live on Friday the 13th, Saturday the 14th, and Sunday the 15th. She’ll also be the featured guest on the convention’s popular “Raw Hobbit” show, a 1-on-1 interview styled after William Shatner’s “Raw Nerve”. The convention is closed with a live broadcast of Middle-earth Talk Radio, hosted by Robinson and Martinez.

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If you have read J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Lord of the Rings you may be one of millions of readers who wondered whether the fantastic creature known as the Balrog of Moria really had wings. It’s a made-up creature in a fantasy book and most people do no more than wonder. But in tight-knit fan circles the argument has been raging for decades over whether the Balrog really had wings or not, this despite the fact that the matter was logically laid to rest.

Tolkien scholar Michael Martinez published a well-researched essay revealing the truth about Balrogs and their wings at the height of a raging debate in which people trying to prove there were no wings in the book resorted to malicious personal attacks against anyone trying to show what the book said. Citing original sources and laying out the debate in an unbiased fashion, Martinez proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the Balrog’s so-called wings were “shadow stuff” and not a metaphor.

Despite being confronted by the best argument in cyberspace on the matter, anti-wings fans continued their war of personal attacks, misrepresentations, and deliberately bad scholarship to win converts by distorting the fact. Numerous polls nonetheless show that a majority of readers accept that the Balrog had wings — wings of darkness. After several more years, Martinez was once again pressured into responding to the arguments by writing another essay detailing the facts and the truth about Balrogs. This time around, the arguments were laid to rest for a while.

In the latest round of attacks on the credibility of people who accept what Tolkien had to say about Balrogs, some people now hiding behind pseudonyms like Halfir and Elenhir have launched a new jihad of lies and distortions in order to shore up their flagging arguments. Martinez, who is active in the Tolkien forum at SF-Fandom, has asked not to be included in any more of these irrational, premeditated fan fights.

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