Folk Songs and Dances

Folk Songs and Dances

Royal Albert Hall

The Prom this morning begins at 11am at the Royal Albert Hall. I am in the car, having just enjoyed our usual Saturday morning family breakfast at Ness Gardens.

It's the London Symphony Orchestra this morning, and that usually bodes for quality listening. The first piece of music is English Folk Song Suite by Ralph Vaughan Williams. As you would expect, it's a jolly outing, stopping short of pompous.

Next it's Gunther Schuller's Eine kleine Posaunenmusik (A Little Trombone Music) - should be a laugh. The poor trombone is an instrument plagued with unintentional comedy. This piece, though, does have some depth. For all involved, I'm grateful for that.

During the interval there is some discussion about military bands and music, which interests me muchly. Ironically for an all-English programme, my mind can't help but wander to Scotland and one of my favourite instrumental sounds, that of the Bagpipes [for the record, I am aware there are certain English propagations of the Bagpipes]. Maybe the most ceremonial of all instruments. From a primal military perspective, I guess that, when you hear a troupe of those coming for you, you'll almost certainly run in the opposite direction.

My concentration is starting to wane during Tippett's 'Triumph', which I must say I'm struggling to decipher. I'm likewise unsure of what to comment about Michael Almond's English Dances and Percy Grainger's The Lads of Wamphray - except to say that the name 'Percy Grainger' is a perfect fit for this region of theme. And on that note, it's the one we've all been waiting for to break the monotony: Percy Grainger's arrangement of English Country Gardens. I imagine myself at a May Day fete on a village green somewhere in Buckinghamshire [we don't tend to get them in the North West.] You know what I'm talking about: there's Morris dancing, hoopla, and a coconut shy. 

Closing the show is A Lincolnshire Posy, and if I'm expecting it to follow suit of the Country Gardens, I am a little mistaken. Not so frilly is this piece; sounds more serious. What it does have in common with Country Gardens is that it carries that same, grounded richness.

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Angeline Morrison: The Sorrow Songs

It's half past five, I am just getting over this afternoon's Traitors prom at the RAH, but now it is back up to Gateshead.

Angeline Morrison delivers the Black British story in the medium of folk music arrangements. This prom immediately takes me back a few years, to 2020 and 2021, when Black Lives Matter became hotly topical as a result of the brutal murder of George Floyd. At the time, I became deeply engrossed in Black British history, joining walking tours through the city of Liverpool, and I saw a wholly new side to the city I thought I already knew inside out. Indeed, the race riots of 1919 are described later in this programme; the blue plaque to Charles Wooton was just one of the many landmarks I visited 'during covid'.

Morrison offers a lullaby for lost babies, championing the story of the 'Unknown African Boy,' the vocals and instrumentation are lilting and undulating. We hear of Black history in Wales in the guise of 'Black John' - the first Black British horticulturist.

'The Beautiful Spotted Black Boy' tells a story of an enslaved child exhibited as a curiosity, as was the tradition of the time. The accordion accompaniment adds to the circus theme.

At the moment, there are too many other stories to give them all the absorption they deserve, but when I finish this Proms marathon I will definitely be coming back to visit Angeline Morrison's album of the same name, to give each my full attention and cognition.

And to conclude this post, my own thoughts on the proms and diversity: 

The proms audience demographic is, let's face it, an elitist realm populated by the white middle classes. There are - of course, and quite rightly - deliberate efforts being made to increase diversity of the proms performers (what did the artist roster look like 50 years ago compared to now, one wonders?). But what of the audiences? Only when we see the same amount of diversity here will we truly know progress.