Music can inspire and inform, and, at a time of growing opposition to Donald Trump and dismay at the political situation in the UK, it’s appropriate that the folk scene should celebrate protest. As a musical history lesson, Shake the Chains was eclectic and adventurous, but the new songs that dominated the concert were often more concerned with the past than the present.
Musically, this was a classy affair, with an impressive lineup of Nancy Kerr, Hannah Martin and the Scottish singer Findlay Napier, along with Tim Yates and Greg Russell. They swapped solos, backed by fiddles, guitars and slick harmony vocals on a set that included a tribute to Victor Jara, a CND singalong from the 1960s, Ding Dong Dollar, and Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth. The new material ranged from Kerr’s tribute to the Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing, who was hounded to death for his sexuality, to stories of her activist mum. The strongest contemporary comment came from Martin, with her timely lament for a woman held at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre and an inventive, poetic attack on renewable energy subsidy cuts.
But the outstanding performance of the night came from special guest and veteran campaigner Peggy Seeger. Now 81, she switched from old union songs to a poignant story of Filipino care workers, Lullabies for Strangers, and then attacks on Trump and his climate-change policies that were first hilarious and then furious.
