We recently shared Ballad of a Southern Midwife, the new single from Sarah Jane Scouten taken from her forthcoming album Confessions.
Originally written for her first album 10 years ago, Scouten called the single one of the most relevant songs she has written adding “It was written before #metoo, before Gian Ghomeshi, before repeals of abortion laws in the southern United States, including Alabama who made abortion categorically illegal in 2019, including cases of incest and rape. This song is about the overlap of religious intolerance and sexual oppression and a woman’s fight to live on her own terms, regardless of the consequences.”
She has just revealed the accompanying video which comes from a 1931 silent film about the Frontier Nursing Services in rural Kentucky, which still runs today. For ‘Ballad of a Southern Midwife’ Sarah Jane chose to tell the story of true-life southern midwives. It opens with the statistic, ‘In our history, we have lost more women in childbirth than war’.
Confessions is due for release later this year in November.
https://www.sarahjanescouten.com/