This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre during which sword-wielding soldiers on horseback cut through a crowd of protestors in Manchester who were demanding social and political reform. There were estimated to be 60,000 protesters gathered at St Peter’s Fields, which even by today’s standards is an incredible show of solidarity. Despite being 200 years ago that event seems increasingly relevant to today in an age where one day, the streets are filled with protestors tackling everything from climate change to repressive regimes and on the next the British government sanctions an arms trade fair in Docklands. Lines are continually linked across time, an exercise that often serves as a reminder of how far we’ve come (or not). It’s something that folk singers are often acutely aware, as demonstrated in a newly commissioned theatre and folk music project Rising Up – Peterloo 2019.
In 1819, the concept of freedom of speech, protest and democracy were tested dramatically when armed soldiers charged at peaceful protesters. Two centuries on this new commission tells the personal stories of two women linked across time and through experience as they struggle to rise up and find their voice.
Rising Up combines compelling and original narrative and song, with text by acclaimed storyteller, Debs Newbold (King Lear Retold, Through The Seasons) and original songs by Sean Cooney (The Young’uns). The songs and music will be performed by Sam Carter (False Lights), Lucy Farrell (Furrow Collective) and Jim Molyneux (4Square / The Lost Words: Spell Songs). The piece also features actresses, Helen O’Hara (‘Kat’) and Joanna Holden (‘Maggie’).
In 1819 one of the bloodiest and most defining moments in our history took place in the centre of Manchester. A peaceful mass meeting of some 60,000 working people, no longer prepared to suffer poverty and discrimination, was turned into a massacre by a fearful ruling class. Fast forward nearly 200 years and Rising Up asks do many people in Britain still consider themselves as distanced from Government and the new ruling classes as those of early 19th century Britain? What might those orators, poets and community leaders have said about society today?
Rising Up is a unique, creative folk music and theatre project to mark the bicentenary of the Peterloo Massacre and considers the conditions that led to this incident.
The folk song tradition has for many centuries been a key device in documenting national and international events, generating awareness of social injustices and as well as the joys, trials and tribulations of the working classes. Wherever people have felt injustice, hardship and lack of representation, they have turned to culture; and frequently song. This is as true today as it was in 1819.
There are many examples in the UK folk music tradition, sometimes centuries old, of reflecting the experiences of people, places and events through song. A few of the more recent examples include Ewan MacColl’s The Manchester Rambler (about the mass trespass of Kinder Scout) ; Charles Parker’s Radio Ballads (for the BBC commissioned series of songs about working people – railway men, miners and fishermen amongst them); Peter Bellamy’s The Transports, the folk ballad opera about prisoner transportation; Leon Rossleson’s Palaces of Gold (about the Aberfan disaster); the English Folk Dance & Song Society’s Sweet Liberties project (marking 800 years of democratic movements) and The Young Un’s recent recording and stage show, The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff (the story of one man’s remarkable journey from begging on the streets in the North of England to fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War and The Cable Street Riots).
Rising Up – Peterloo 2019 Dates
17th October – Home, Manchester Folk Festival – details
18th October – Colston Hall, Bristol – details
19th October – The Music Room, Liverpool – details
24th October – Cecil Sharp House, London – details
25th October – The Sage, Gateshead – details
Find out more here: https://rising-up.uk/
Project Partners
English Folk Dance & Song Society
English Folk Expo
So It Is