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Now the festival season is on us we’re hoping to get as much publicity about the festival out as possible over the summer. I’m hoping to be able to get to Cleckheaton Folk Festival, not only for the music but also because we are coming up to the 200th anniversary of the Luddite uprising, with Cleckheaton (just south of Bradford), being right in the middle of where the fiercest Luddite activity occurred. The way in which the songs of the Luddites have survived is especially interesting as they are some of the only ‘documentary’ evidence that this secret society left behind. When Frank Peel, a local journalist in the 1870s, wrote up the history of the uprising there were still some people alive who could remember it and sing the songs – but the impact of the suppression of the Luddites had been so severe (17 men were hung in York as a result) that it was only by overhearing by chance that he even knew the songs had survived – they hadn’t been sung publicly for fear of retribution. We will be having a workshop on Luddite song during the festival, run by Theo from Seize the Day.

Sam

Our fundraiser – World In Harmony??? – in May was a resounding success. The evening began with Fusion. Steve Skinner has performed solo at previous Raise Your Banners Festivals but this time he had a full band playing music that mixed jazz, flamenco and folk with African and eastern styles. This was brought to life by an excellent group of musicians and the set was brought to a fitting conclusion with a song dedicated to the struggles of those in the Arab world for democracy and justice, the music accompanied by reportage from news broadcasts from Egypt and Tunisia.

Choirs are always a major part of the Raise Your Banners Festival and it was great to have Voicemale and the Peace Offerings performing at the fundraiser and bringing their harmonies to the concert.

The night was brought to an energetic conclusion as it was ceilidh time and any reluctance to get on the dance floor was overcome by the klezmer rhythms of The Klatsh, with Judith enthusiaistically taking people of all ages through the steps.

So, to answer the implied question in the fundraiser’s title, there was plenty of harmony at Shipley District Social Club that Friday night as people wended their way home, most proudly stating ‘I’m cooperative’, thanks to the badges distributed by the people from the Co-op.

Sam

One of the reasons I got involved in Raise Your Banners was to try and broaden the range of music that we have on as part of the festival. I think a big part of the festival is always going to be singer-songwriters who come from the folk scene, although increasingly I find the songwriters we have on are as much influenced by punk as Woodie Guthrie. When I talk to people about political music outside of that scene very often they will talk about the fantastic Reggae and Hip-Hop artists who have strong political and often explicitly socialist messages in their songs (check out Max Romeo’s ‘Socialism Is Love’ for example or the Hip-Hop group Dead Prez). At the moment I’m listening to a lot of 70s soul and funk, one of the great things about it is that as well as the well known artists like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and the genius Gill Scott-Heron the ‘funk vibe’ also travelled all over the world and some of the best stuff that I’ve discovered recently has been Brazilian bands like Banda Black Rio who combined samba with funk and the political singer-songwriter movement that was known as MPB in Brazil, and a couple of compilations of Cuban Funk Si Para Usted.

Sam

It started with a message from Nick Hall – “We’ll do a fundraiser for you if you like with the Big Band.” As the Hall Brothers Big Band had performed a great set at the end of RYB 2009 this was an offer we couldn’t refuse. A few electronic exchanges later, Darren Poyzer’s Homeworld and Gary Kaye were confirmed as giving their support to the event, which was fixed for 19 November 2010. One of our regular sound engineers, Protag, was available so we knew we had the makings of a great night – we just needed to secure the right venue.

Chris set out on this task and, after a number of possibilities were investigated and discussed, it was agreed amongst the committee that the Manningham Mills Community Centre had the right combination of size, atmosphere, catering and commitment to the event. I was a little concerned initially as I had not yet been to this venue but any fears I had were dissolved as soon as I stepped over the threshold. A welcoming foyer area and café led onto a large brick lined performance space. The low ceiling meant that the acoustics were superb and the food from the café and real ale from Old Spot Brewery completed the offer. Raffle prizes were kindly donated by three local Co-op supermarkets and the artists also donated CDs.

Despite a dreadful misty night the artists all arrived in good time, though some running up and down the street and frantic waving was required to guide people into the venue’s parking area at the side of the mill. All that was needed now was an audience!

The first couple of people arrived at 6pm, which seemed a bit over keen for a gig that was not due to start until 7.45, but we were very glad to see them nonetheless.  Gradually the café filled with RYB friends old and new and the gig kicked off just a few minutes late. Sam welcomed the audience before handing over to MC Neil Etherington who promised us a Pudsey free night despite it being the BBC’s Children in Need day.

Gary Kaye’s opening set was a stormer as always with ‘No Pasaran’ a personal highlight and then Darren, with Roydan Styles on guitar and Dee Mischka on percussion built up the atmosphere before a short break where we tried to make sure everyone had a raffle ticket for the great prizes on offer.

Because of the intimacy of the room, the Hall Brothers Big Band decided to play an acoustic set which included old favourites and newly written songs – the set closer ‘How Deep is this Valley’ reminded us of Yorkshire’s history of immigration and integration and marvellously exposed the lies and hypocrisy of the BNP and EDL who have tried to cause so much trouble in recent times.

At such a difficult time economically it was pleasing to see so many people leaving the event with smiles on their faces. I recently spoke to a work colleague whose job is under threat due to the coalition spending cuts who said that the night was just what she needed to cheer her up. Made all the hard work worthwhile!

The night was successful in raising awareness of RYB and in raising funds for the 2011 festival and the RYB Committee would like to convey our huge thanks to all those who helped make it such a great night.

Joe

Welcome to the Raise Your Banners blog! As part of the organising committee for the festival over the last few years, I’ve been at meetings and had chats with other people involved in RYB (which I’ll use for short from now on) about what we want from our new updated website, and one of the things that came up was a blogspot.

This all seemed like a great idea at the time, but now I have to sit down and write something I’m wondering what people would actually want to read in a RYB blog. Do you want to know about the organising committee meetings? As any of you involved in any sort of organising endeavour know – and particularly those on the left – we may float off into dreamland during meetings, fantasising that we are anarcho-socialists in pre-revolutionary Russia, administering secret oaths to liberty in the back room of some seedy St Petersburg tavern, sipping vodka as our eyes glance around the room, working out who are the true comrades and who are Tsarist agent provocateurs, the icy wind blowing through the door as Dmitri returns from Minsk with fraternal greetings from the workers in the munitions factories collective and a commitment to join in the uprising on the glorious day when… you realise you were supposed to minute that someone needs to email the band to let them know that if they get to the venue before 5.30pm they’ll need Dave the caretaker’s mobile number cos he won’t be in the building.

I don’t think I’ll write about the committee meetings.

Maybe I could write about Bradford – it’s been a very interesting time here over the last few weeks, mainly because of the English Defence League coming to town. From an RYB point of view it was also interesting because of the importance of music in the political response to all that. (Apparently some EDLers were playing White Riot by the Clash at the end of their nonsense – I’ve never particularly liked that song but I’d have liked to hear what Joe Strummer would have made of it.) I won’t go into the politics of how Bradford ended up with at least three different anti-EDL events over that weekend, but as I wandered around town between the ‘We Are Bradford’ and ‘Bradford Together’ events and stopped off on the ‘frontline’ where the EDL were, it was good to bump into a number of local musicians coming and going to the different events. I ended up talking to an old friend of mine who is lead singer in a local Ska band – they had had big discussions within the band about whether to play at one of the events and one of the deciding factors in giving it a miss was the recognition that despite being, like most of the Two-Tone bands in the past, a multi-racial band, they did get quite a few skinheads coming to their gigs and they didn’t want to risk inadvertently causing any trouble.

Anyway if you’ve any comments on the blog or suggestions for what you’d like to hear on it in future do get in touch at raiseyourbanners@gmail.com

Sam