“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”
These were the words of Lollard priest John Ball, delivered in 1381 to a group of rebels at Blackheath, from where I write now. Ball, immortalised by Froissart as the “mad priest of Kent”, continued…
“From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will ) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.”
Ball delivered his sermon shortly after being sprung from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s prison in Maidstone at the beginning of the Peasants’ Revolt. Ball was shortly thereafter taken prisoner at Coventry, and then hanged, drawn and quartered in the presence of the child king Richard II.
But that’s enough history. The reason I bring up John Ball is that this hero of the common people was the subject of a song sung on Tuesday evening at the Royal Festival Hall in London, of all places.
The irony-appreciating artiste was Chris Wood – son of Kent, musician, singer, storyteller and teacher. Wood is known and respected in folk music circles. He is part of a longstanding collaboration with diatonic accordionist Andy Cutting, and a few years ago founded the English Acoustic Collective with Robert Harbron and John Dipper. Wood is also a solo artist, and writes material together with storyteller Hugh Lupton.
Wood was at the RFH to give a concert as part of the Imagined Village project, but he started the evening with a solo spot. Just him and his guitar, delivered from the side of the stage.
Only a few songs were performed, but each was introduced with a story delivered in Wood’s distinctive north Kent accent. We learned of peasants and kings, and also the singer’s well ‘ard six year old daughter. Wood sang, accompanying his rich, baritone voice with a guitar made “from an old Post Office” by some bloke in Exeter. A true English guitar with a gorgeous, harp-like sound.
We were also treated to a discussion of the Enclosures Act. Wood has this theory that the implications of major social changes can take seven generations to be realised. We are, he said, only now facing the consequences of the 1801 act of parliament, which transformed a fifth of England into private land to which commoners were denied access. The result was the forced urbanisation of many English working people. Wood sees the effects of the Enclosures Act in, for example, a soaring prison population, and our inability to take a drink “without going maaaad”.
The highlight of the evening for me personally was Chris Wood’s solo set, but the highlight of the programme was The Imagined Village. The latter is high decibel folk, dub, ambient, bhangra – you name it – with a direct line to centuries past, and performed by a large group of Englishmen and women of varying ages, hair coverage, skin tones and cultural heritage.
The Imagined Village project is:
Bragg is one of the cheeky chappies of popular music and left politics. Traditional music aficionados will know all about Eliza Carthy and her dad Martin. Carthy junior is the only fiddle player I know of who can pogo dance while playing. This young woman is absolutely manic, and by the end of the evening her bow had hardly a hair left on it! Carthy senior is a national treasure.
Project founder Simon Emerson is a musician and record producer of renown, with an impressive track record going back to 80s jazz-soul outfit Working Week. In the 90s he founded the Afro-Celt Sound System.
Sheila Chandra is a singer who has done work with complex vocal drones. Johnny Kalsi used to play with Transglobal Underground, and is now with the Dhol Foundation. Andy Gangadeen is a respected session drummer who founded The Bays, and bassist Francis Hylton is well-known in Hip Hop circles. Cellist Barney Morse Brown knows a thing or two about playing live with digital loops and stuff, and Sheema Mukherjee is a diminutive figure who sits near the back of the stage, but fills out the sound with her virtuoso sitar playing. Chris Wood we’ve already covered.
Benjamin Zephaniah. Good grief! What can one say about Benjamin Zephaniah? For some years I was unable to appreciate his talents, but I now rate him very highly as a writer and storyteller. Zephaniah is part of the Imagined Village project, but didn’t appear on stage owing to other commitments. Instead he recorded the vocal track for a variation on the ballad Tam Lyn, and appeared in large relief on a video screen above the stage.
John Copper is, following the death in 2004 of his father Bob Copper, the head of a group of a capella folk singers known as the Copper Family. Hailing from Rottingdean in East Sussex, this tribe has for generations collected, performed and preserved many English folksongs, and the family songbook is a priceless document. John Copper sings along with his sister Jill, her husband Jon and Bob’s six grandchildren, who perform independently as the Young Coppers.
The Imagined Village set began with a video of John Copper describing the changes his family has seen in the South Downs, and talking about the bond between people and place in the Sussex landscape. Billy Bragg, wearing a pearly jacket, then delivered a version of John Barleycorn. He also sang a song called England Half English, which beautifully describes the state of modern England and its peoples’ sense of national identity.
Martin Carthy introduced the performance of Tam Lyn with a story about the origins of this ballad of a young woman seduced by a man in thrall to the fairies. Zephaniah transformed the song about love at first sight into a modern ballad about how a girl in search of the “holy herb” meets an asylum seeker in a nightclub. Carthy senior is regarded by some as an arch-English traditionalist, but it was his idea to have Zephaniah reinterpret the old classic.
My favourite song of the Imagined Village set was Chris Wood and Eliza Carthy’s version of Cold Haily Rainy Night. This was backed up by the Young Coppers, Johnny Kalsi’s ferocious dhol drumming and Sheema Mukherjee’s hall-filling sitar.
Hard Times of Old England (Retold) was the final song of the set. It was sung by Billy Bragg, and recast to reflect the contemporary realities of empty holiday homes, closing post offices and the crisis in agriculture. A lament, for sure, but with an optimistic twist that emphasises the Good Times of Old England as a multicultural and inclusive society.
Thanks to David T of Harry’s Place for supplying the ticket. I’m very glad I accepted the invitation.
