Hey, That's My Kind Of Music ! (8)

June Tabor Aqaba

I shall celebrate my 800th post with one of my favourite songs sung by one of my favourite singers - Aqaba (written by Bill Caddick) from June Tabor's eponymous album. In case you don't know what's going on in this song, it's about TE Lawrence (or 'Lawrence of Arabia' - remember the David Lean film?) who wrote Seven Pillars Of Wisdom and died in a motorcycle accident. I've written another post about June Tabor here.

Common Wealth And Common Ground

On the Isle's higher ground (never very high - the highest point is only 40m above sea level) you can find traces of medieval open fields, and the long strips into which they were divided. Indeed, in some areas this centuries-old farming system is being experimentally reintroduced. Here you can see alternate strips of beans and barley...

There are only a few places left where you can still witness this ancient practice of strip farming: Laxton in Nottinghamshire, Braunton in North Devon, Laugharne in West Wales - and the Isle of Axholme. It survived in the Isle because the land was never 'enclosed' like most of the low-lying agricultural land of the English Midlands.

'Enclosure' (formerly 'Inclosure') of open fields started gradually in the 13th century, and happened wholesale in the 18th and 19th centuries. Basically this was a massive land grab for already wealthy landowners, who appropriated public land for their own benefit - becoming even richer and more powerful in the process.

In medieval England, the typical manorial village was surrounded by several large, unenclosed arable fields. Each villager (or commoner) was allocated by the landowner (usually the lord of the manor) a number of strips in these fields, which he would then subsistence farm. The rights to use this land were shared between landowner and tenant. Other 'common' rights included rights to cut wood, to run pigs in common woodland, to make hay on common meadowland, and to graze livestock on land where crops were not being grown. There was also a communal village green for social and festive activities.

But by the end of the 19th century most land had been 'enclosed' - hedged, fenced-off and taken into full, private ownership. Only a few common pastures and village greens remained. Despite riots and revolts, the Enclosure movement had become unstoppable. So the traditional common rights to the land enjoyed by the small-scale, peasant farmers had all but disappeared. A mass of working people, hoping to escape the resulting poverty, fled the countryside and crowded into the growing number of towns and cities which had sprung up to accommodate the Industrial Revolution. But conditions there were even grimmer - as anyone who has read Hard Times by Charles Dickens knows only too well.

We tend to forget that England was once 'open', unfenced and unhedged - and, if we sometimes get all lyrical and romantic about hedges, let's remember they are symbols of privatization, the enforced parcelling up of the land for the personal gain of a few. So this is the reason the Isle of Axholme has very few hedges, the reason it looks the way it does: it's a pre-Enclosure landscape...

Here's one of my favourite singers, June Tabor, singing about England, and about 'common wealth and common ground'...

A Place Called England

I rode out on a bright May morning/Like a hero in a song/Looking for a place called England/Trying to find where I belong/Couldn't find the old flood meadow/Or the house that I once knew/No trace of that little river/Or the garden where I grew

I saw town and I saw country/Motorway and sink estate/Rich man in his rolling acres/Poor man still outside the gate/Retail park and burger kingdom/Prairie field and factory farm/Run by men who think that England's/Only a place to park their car

But as the train pulled from the station/Through the wastelands of despair/From the corner of my eye/A brightness filled the filthy air/Someone's sown a patch of sunflowers/Though the soil is sooty black/Marigolds and a few tomatoes/Right beside the railway track

Down behind the terraced houses/In between the concrete towers/Compost heaps and scarlet runners/Secret gardens full of flowers/Meeta grows her scented roses/Right beneath the big jet's path/Bid a fortune for her garden/Eileen turns away and laughs

For wake up George and rise up Arthur/Time to rouse up from your sleep/Deck the horse with sea-green ribbons/Drag the old sword from the deep/Hold the line for Dave and Daniel/As they tunnel through the clay/While the oak in all its glory/Soaks up sun for one more day

So come all you at home with freedom/Whatever the land that gave you birth/There's room for you both root and branch/As long as you love this English earth/Room for vole and room for orchid/Room for all to grow and thrive/Just less room for the fat landowner/On his arse in his four-wheel drive

For England is not flag or Empire/It is not money and it is not blood/It's limestone gorge and granite fell/It's Wealden clay and Severn mud/It's blackbird singing from the may-tree/Lark ascending through the scales/It's robin watching from the spade/And English earth beneath your nails

So here's two cheers for a place called England/Sore abused but not yet dead/A Mr Harding sort of England/Hanging in there by a thread/Here's two cheers for the crazy Diggers/Now their hour shall come around/We shall plant the seed they saved us/Common wealth and common ground

Words by Maggie Holland

To be continued...

The Sound Of The Tabor

Right up there among my favourite folk singers is June Tabor. Except she's not just a 'folk' singer - the songs she carefully chooses and individually interprets range from wartime ballads like Lili Marlene to jazz standards such as  Round Midnight. She always sings with passion, intensity and commitment. Her extraordinary, unforgettable alto voice is as dark and rich and deep as a fine, oaky red wine - with strong notes of roughness and toughness. Yet she does tender too. Very much so. I love this singer's work.

This song is from her wonderful album Against The Streams - the 1st CD of hers I possessed. (In fact, someone bought it me for a 40th birthday present, um, a few years ago. Better late than never!) Since then I must have heard most of her recordings, and seen her in concert several times. In live gigs she's spellbindingly intense. In the late 1970s I worked with her for a short period in Hornsey Library, London - she was a qualified librarian and I a trainee. This was around the time her first record Airs And Graces came out.

May Day

I know everybody's busy lighting Beltane bonfires; attending Labour Day rallies; decorating whitethorn bushes with garlands and painted eggshells; shepherding livestock to higher, summer pastures (it's that word transhumance again!); worshipping Saint Walpurga; worshipping Satan; skipping round the maypole; crowning the May Queen; morris dancing; remembering (yes I'm carefully using a neutral verb here) the Act of Union which brought England and Scotland together as Great Britain exactly 301 years ago; getting drunk at the 'Obby 'Oss festival in Padstow, Cornwall; running naked into the sea at St Andrews, Scotland; filling May Baskets with flowers and leaving them on doorsteps; and presenting friends and strangers with a single lily-of-the-valley as a symbol of springtime...

I know everyone's doing all of these things. But when you get a moment do take a look at June Tabor performing at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2004. Here are also videos of Jim Moray, Danu, Martin Simpson, The Waifs, the lovely Kate Rusby (I nearly spilt a cup of coffee accidentally over her once but that's another story) and Joan Baez singing the Ryan Adams song In My Time Of Need.

June Tabor: Folk Diva

The time: 7.45pm, Saturday 19 April 2008. The place: Harlech Theatre, overlooking the sweep of Cardigan Bay.

She stands in the spotlight like a low-key jazz diva (low-key literally - her voice is deep and dark, as smooth and rich as a nutty, deep red wine - perhaps Rioja or Cabernet Sauvignon, not young Beaujolais or sweet sherry).

She is dressed in trademark black. Her normally jet black hair has a honeyed tinge. She stands motionless; the only movement comes from her hands, clasping and unclasping as if from tension. The small audience of 50 is motionless too, silent, concentrated. She sings. Between the songs she interweaves stories, anecdotes, tales of injustice and retribution. But mostly her words are about love gone wrong.

Depending on the song her voice chills, warms, lightly dances. I feel she is looking directly at me, singing to me alone. She breaks off in the middle of a song, stands to one side, nodding to the pianist at the grand piano next to her on stage. He solos for a while, inflecting the folksy tune with blue-note jazz shadings and textures, cascading up and down the keyboard as effortlessly as Keith Tippett.

The pianist is Huw Warren. The singer is June Tabor, Britain's greatest interpreter of the folk ballad. The Billie Holiday of folk song. I've seen her in concert twice before, and each time has been an intense musical experience, a revelation. She switches from folk to jazz to popular song, from Don't Think Twice It's All Right to Aqaba to Underneath The Lamplight. I don't want it to end.

I worked with her for a couple of weeks in Hornsey Library in the mid-to-late 1970s - about the time her 1st record Airs And Graces came out. There was a buzz around her then but she seemed very modest. She was a qualified librarian. I was a trainee. She taught me the secret lore of bibliographical research, the arcane knowledge of cataloguing. How to straighten books on shelves. Dealing with awkward borrowers who wanted the latest Catherine Cookson yesterday and wouldn't pay their fines.

The rest is history. Well, not for me. But for her. She's worked with some of the best folk singers and musicians in the business. She won Singer of the Year at the 2004 BBC Folk Awards. Elvis Costello wrote a song specially for her - All This Useless Beauty.

Two hours later she leaves the stage after thanking the rapt audience for its quiet concentration. I hang around a while, thinking she might come and sign some of her CDs which are for sale in the foyer. She doesn't. And I am too shy to ask to see her for a minute or two backstage. So, to quote Dylan, I melt back into the night. It is dark outside. A strong wind is blowing. I head back down that long. lonesome coastal road to the campsite and my tent.

Details of June's current tour can be found here and a short biography of her here. I urge you to try these YouTube videos and see what you think. I hope you love her as much as I do. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JjF9KnF-qUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnaXOjUTzKwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wljUKh7vVc