☰UNITY IN LOCKDOWN
...still singing and sharing our music.
While Unity's regular sessions were not taking place, members did what we could to share some music - and more!
On 29th January 2022, Unity Folk Club participated in a workshop of the People's Music Network: watch the session here, and find out about the history of the Club on our history page.
Rigs of the Time
Bob Malcolm says: "My update of Rigs of the Time - I say 'my' but the first verse is a slight update on Maddy Prior's version from '99 and the Cummings verse (that set me off) comes from friend Annie Sutcliffe from the Stevenage folk not-quite club."
Some pages from Patti McKenna's sketchbook
Coming Through the Rye
Norma Pollack sent us her social distancing rendition of Coming through the Rye.
MURDER CULTURE
If you kill someone, then I call you a murderer.
If you don't know that the wealth of the west is largely based on murder, then I call you ignorant.
If, having been informed, you choose to ignore this information, then I call you callous.
Only when your culture can recognise mass murder, can I recognise you as a comrade.
Till then, I shall sing the stillborn culture of the murdered.
Neil Devlin
Closed/Kapali
When will we re-open again?
Our lives are closed
We wait
We put our lives on hold
We only see people down a Video phone
We are protecting others and ourselves by staying in
We are protecting our Health Service and workers
All our campaigning
All our socialising
All our going to the cinema
All our enjoying life
All our drinks
All our eating out
All our going to concerts
All our walks in the park
All on hold
In case In case we are carriers of this dreaded disease
In case we might catch it from someone else
It is unreal that so many people have died
People are not a number-they are brothers, sisters, mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, aunts, uncles. grandparents.
They are all of us and we shall not forget any of them
Why did we mistreat the planet?
When this is over and it will be over... but
Now we are talking eighteen months
When we have grieved
Will we behave differently?
Will we stop the profit motive?
Will we learn to care for others above ourselves
Will we take better care of wildlife, plants, the oceans and animals?
Hope will get us through
And lets Really Hope that things will be different
© Jennie Lazenby
April 2020
Jennie also nominated this poem by Catherine O'Meara:
In the Time of Pandemic
And the people stayed home.
And they listened, and read books, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still
...
Jennie Lazenby and Ann Marie Benjamin sing Jennie Lazenby's words for Covid 19 Solidarity to If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus by Charles Neblett.
Emily and Susan suggest Bread and Roses. You can find it on YouTube:
- sung by Utah Phillips, who also gives the historical background;
- sung by Pete Seeger;
- sung by Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña (who wrote the tune used by all of these versions for James Oppenheim's poem).
Or, as Emily and Susan say, "you can sing the song" - and maybe send us a Unity version!
Norma writes: "Meanwhile, here is a painting I did a few years ago of my Easter tulips. I've hung it in my kitchen to cheer me up as I could not get real tulips this year. I am thinking of writing a song about Easter tulips..."
Liz Philipson singing Water of Tyne: "where we should have been going this month!"
Out on the Ocean A set of jigs from Dorten Yonder.
Splendid Isolation: Mick Kahn playing a tune by Brendan McGlinchey with an appropriate title for these times!
Steve Suffet plays Aragon Mill: (by Si Kahn). Steve says "I was going to perform Aragon Mill at the 2020 New England Folk Festival (NEFFA) later this month in a mini-concert called Mine, Mill, Factory, and Beyond. It will now be available online as part of the Virtual New England Folk Festival."
