VARIOUS ARTISTS - Songhive: Beelore And Folksong In The British Isles
Private Label
Many folk songs, particularly older ‘trad’ songs from rural areas, deal with crops (e.g. Speed The Plough), flowers (Sweet Primeroses) and trees (The Trees They Do Grow High). Songhive is a project led by Irish fiddler Rowan Piggott to focus our attention on the sorry state of the bee. 80% of pollination in the UK takes place thanks to the bee, but every square kilometre in the UK has lost an average of 11 species of bee and hoverfly, between 1980 and 2013.
Rosie Hodgson, Georgia Lewis and Nancy Kerr have been part of the Songhive project for some time and all appear on this CD. They are joined by Nick Burbridge, The Rheingans Sisters, Ray Chandler and Keryda. Rowan is all over the CD himself – adding to others’ work and making the CD his own.
The music is a mixture of written songs (Peter Bellamy, and those by the contributors to the CD) with, curiously, only one traditional tune – and that has new words! It’s a light, pleasant listen that is thought-provoking and worrying and, as you’d expect, the styles vary considerably from performer to performer. It’s good. A pal who is a beekeeper loves it as well, so it has crossover potential into the apiarist community!
www.songhive.co.uk
Alan Murray
This review appeared in Issue 136 of The Living Tradition magazine