🎶 JOIN FLASH FOLK A 1 NIGHT ONLY POP-UP CHOIR rehearsing and performing at ST Lates I a Night of Folk 🌾 (sign up and more on @soundsbetween bio!)
We’re building our pop-up folk singing collective for the closing night of @offbeat.folkfilmfestival at @staffordshirest on 15th May 👀
One rehearsal.
One performance.
No experience needed.
Together we’ll learn and sing old songs of land, labour and resistance -the kind once sung in pubs, fields, marches and around kitchen tables ❤️
You’ll get lyrics + audio beforehand, then we meet before the event for a relaxed rehearsal and perform that evening as part of A Night of Folk.
Think collective singing, organised chaos and big communal energy 🌾
Massive thank you to @jowancollier@folkinthewild@goatlore , @theo.jackson.art and everyone already sharing this around 🫶
We’re capping it at around 25 people, so sign up while there’s still spaceeee! Sign up link is on @soundsbetween bio. Follow them for more alt-folk events and community music gatherings✨
Here’s another video from our British Library live session with the wonderful new label @folkinthewild last summer.
Instead of talking about the song (I think we all probably agree that it’s Hard Times in Old England these days), we want to give a proper shout out to the indefatigable @jowancollier - the bloke behind Folk In The Wild and one of the best, and hardest working, folk that we’ve met in music.
If you’ve been to a concert, singaround or session in London over the last few years you’ve probably come across Jowan and his wonderful tangle of equipment as he records and archives the scene for posterity - capturing the rawness, energy, joy and community that makes it unique and special. Jowan manages to capture even the ‘mistakes’, hesitations and serendipity in music, making them all an essential part of the meaning. With our lyric memories permanently leaking, it’s no wonder we love him recording us so much…
His new label of field recordings is filled with gorgeous folk music being shared and enjoyed out in the real world, right where it should be - from carolling in the pubs of Sheffield, to Sacred Harp sings, folk club performances, a bunch of us getting the words of our favourite songs wrong in a basement, and much more to come. Do yourselves a favour and go explore them on bandcamp (link in bio), read about the project in this month’s @folklondonmag and help keep it going by buying a few recordings. Right, earnest bit over - something something England’s a bit rubbish innit?
FITW004 #sacredharp #folk #shapenote #christian This recording in London came from my first Sacred Harp experience back in the UK and it was my first all dayer. I had got the bug in New England, where shape note singing began to find its feet as a distinctly American style before migrating south to the churches of Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama.
Upon entry, you’re given a Sacred Harp hymnbook if you don’t have one already and someone will call “345! On the bottom!” or “276! Bridgewater!” and there’s a flurry of turning pages, a quick tune up and the first part of the song is called “sounding out”. This is where you’ll sing the first verse or so with the note names as represented by the shapes. In some quarters, it’s still called ‘Fasola’ music for this reason.
And then the song will start in earnest. Sacred harp is a true buffet of fire and brimstone; timorous worms collide with dreadful curses and fleeting youth in delicious four part harmony.
FITW003 "The dignitaries this time were The Water Chorus, three traditional players who make music that feels like you could step out and live in it. It’s a world of jolly wagonners, hares on the mountain and improbably large rams. For me, it sounds like how an early morning stroll on the Hackney marshes feels, the narrow boats bobbing on the canal on one side and the dewy meadows on the other.
After hearing the Water Chorus around various folk clubs in North London I was fascinated by their repertoire and how easily they translated songs from the distant past. You can see the loud boasting barfly in ‘The Derby Ram’ just as clearly now as when the song was first written over 300 years ago; ‘Pulling Bracken’ still has all the same frustrations and longing and pangs of loneliness that it did in 19th century Scotland when it was first sung.
For being in a studio, albeit one made for audiobooks, to me this recording feels live, the camaraderie between the members is palpable, how they make decisions with a single look, how they lock in and feel the songs and tunes they play.
Hopefully I’ve captured that spark, camaraderie and spirit for you too. It’s bloody super."
FITW002
For as long as it has been around, Kench Hill has been something of a retreat.
It’s been a country home. It’s been a maternity ward during WW2. It has been a place to teach city hardened Hackney schoolchildren about the joys of nature. And every so often, Kench Hill is occupied by the London Sea Shanty Collective as a much needed weekend in the country.
It is nominally quiet. Good enough for recording. So after a long walk and some lunch with the rest of the choir, Kate Mason and I found a the nearest empty room, a dance studio, away from the hubbub and recorded these three banjo tunes.
The first two, ‘Angeline The Baker’ and ‘Cripple Creek’ are the old time banjo standards, Kate’s playing scurrying and harmonising and following her singing voice like an excited, barely tameable small animal.
But my favourite one of the three has to be ‘A Saint Malo’, a song that found its way from Brittany to Quebec. One of the things I particularly like about it is how it’s clearly evolved over the years; the old time tunes were clearly made for the architecture of the banjo whereas ‘A Saint Malo’ sounds like it started life as a fiddle tune and has since changed, bit by bit, through being passed down from generation to generation. Also it’s great to see a (now) Canadian song holds its rootin’, tootin’ own against two tunes firmly from below the 49th parallel.
I’ve come back to these recordings time and time again and Kate was the first person I checked with about the (then) crazy possibility of releasing these tunes into the world.
And now it’s here. The restorative power of a nice spring walk around Kench Hill strikes once more.
