Today marks the release of Angeline Morrison‘s latest album, The Sorrow Songs, on Topic Records. It has been hailed as one of the most significant and most anticipated releases of 2022 (order it here). In his review of the album, David Pratt described it as a gift to the folk community and Angeline’s ancestors, adding, “it’s an album that will connect with the hearts and emotions of the listeners.”
Angeline has shared an animated video for ‘Unknown African Boy (D. 1830)’ to celebrate the release. The video was created by Marry Waterson, whose animation work has been featured many times on Folk Radio; there’s a reason she is in such demand; her animations always connect with the song on a deep level, bringing elements of the storyline to life. Unknown African Boy (d.1830) is no exception; it was one of the first Sorrow Songs Angeline wrote.
“This was the very first of The Sorrow Songs. It came to me as I paced up and down my local beach, wrestling with the tragic story I had just read. Many slave ships passed by the Isles of Scilly during the era of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (1526 – 1867 approx). The tricky waters in this area meant that many ships were wrecked. In the case of this ship, the exhausted captain mistook the day mark of St Martin’s for the lighthouse of St Agnes, and the ship was wrecked. A local newspaper article of the time lists some of the items washed up on shore. The list includes palm oil, several hundred elephant tusks, a box of silver dollars, two boxes of gold dust, and the body of an unknown ‘West African boy’, estimated age around 8. The boy is buried in St Martin’s churchyard, Isles of Scilly. This song is from the perspective of his mother.”
Order the album today: https://angelinemorrison.lnk.to/thesorrowsongs
Angeline has a busy month ahead of her. She will feature on the BBC Radio 2 Folk Show next week (on October 12th at 21:00) when she will talk from Cornwall about her new album, and she’s also making her debut appearance on ‘Later With Jools’. She embarks on a UK tour, including a show at Cecil Sharp House on October 20th.
Talking about her wishes for this album, released during Black History Month, she says, “What I would really love is for people to want to sing these songs. I wrote each song with a chorus or refrain that I hope will be singable, so that people might want to sing them in folk clubs, and in doing so these stories will continue to be re-told in song”.
The album title is inspired by W.E.B du Bois’ 1903 classic of African American literature, ‘The Souls of Black Folk’, which Angeline re-read after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. It’s among the top 100 books downloaded on Project Gutenberg; you can read it free here.
Chapter xiv, ‘Of The Sorrow Songs,’ is all about the folk songs of enslaved Africans in America and their descendants. Angeline, a descendant of enslaved African people, explains: “This chapter speaks to the fact that this body of folk song acts as a container for the history of the enslaved populations in America, as a way of communicating their unspeakable pain, and a way of giving voice to a people who had been rendered voiceless.“
The Sorrow Songs is Out today, 7th October 2022, via Topic Records – Order/Save here.
On Tour in October – TIcket links and details here: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/7187010
More: https://linktr.ee/angelcakepie