We’re looking forward to a first visit to Turner Sims from singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Angeline Morrison. She brings music from her powerful album The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience on Saturday 19 October.
Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be a musical artist.
I’ve basically always been a singer and songwriter… I’ve thought back really hard, and I honestly can’t think of a time when I wasn’t understanding the world through songs, music and melodies. It just feels innate for me. I’ve always loved traditional English song from the moment I first heard it, and I also love and make music in the genres of soul, psych folk and hauntology.
For people that don’t know, could you explain what your album is about?
The Sorrow Songs : Folk Songs of Black British Experience is what I refer to as my ‘re-storying’ or re-weaving of the lost and forgotten historic Black presence that has been in Britain for at least two thousand years, into the tapestry of contemporary folk music. We have all these Black British ancestors, who lived and belonged right here in the land, yet what we don’t have is a body of folk song that speaks to their lives and experiences. I wanted the songs to sound as though they themselves might be lost traditional songs. Each story is based on true historical events that I found through my very intense period of research.
Has your experience of folk music been influenced as a folk artist of colour?
It’s impossible to separate my life as a person of colour in Britain and in the world now, with any of the
things I do, or make, or engage with. The particularity of this kind of beingness and life experience informs everything. So, in terms of folk music, my work is focussed on giving voice to these forgotten or erased ancestors, whose voices also belong in the stream of sound that we refer to as folk.
Out of all the Sorrow Songs, which story is most compelling to you?
It’s so, so hard to pick just one!! But if I have to, I’ll say the first Sorrow Song that I wrote, which is also
the single from the album – Unknown African Boy (d.1830). When I heard this story of an enslaved eight-year-old child, whose body had been washed up on shore alongside other items destined for trade, in a shipwreck off the Isles of Scilly, the story refused to leave me. I paced on the beach for ages, trying to figure out how on earth I could make this story, which had broken my heart and lodged itself firmly within it, into a song. I hope that the song I finally managed to make, honours the life of this child and others like him, and also acknowledges the grief of his mother, and others like her.
What are you looking forward to about performing at Turner Sims? What can our audiences expect?
I’m looking forward to all of it! Audiences can expect a combination of traditional songs and newly composed songs from my newest album, as well as a selection from The Sorrow Songs album. Clarke Camilleri, who plays banjo and guitar on The Sorrow Songs album and who is also a very fine singer, will be opening for me and will also join me on some of The Sorrow Songs. We like to think it’ll be a combination of contemporary folk combined with our tribute to the 60s folk that influences and inspires us.
Angeline Morrison + support from Clarke Camilleri come to Turner Sims on Saturday 19 October. Find out more and book your ticket here
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.