Commoners Choir

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Regular: £10.99

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Cat No: NMCD49

Release Date: 01 September 2017

Label: No Masters

Packaging Type: Digipak

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 5020393904926

Genres: Folk

Description
Commoners Choir formed in 2015 with a walk up to the summit of Kinder Scout in the Peak District (to commemorate the Mass Trespassers of 1932), and sang their entire repertoire (two songs) to a handful of startled hikers. From such small acorns, mighty oaks have grown.

This is their debut album which distils all that they are into an hour of marvellous melodies, powerful voices, and passionate ideals. Songs about food riots, inequality, the cultural harrying of the North, Woody Guthrie, the Calder Valley floods, homelessness, refugees, the printed word, and the rhyming possibilities of Health Secretary Jeremy Huntâ€¦ stitched together with soundbites, found sounds, and words of wisdom. Their songs and arrangements are written by Boff Whalley, songsmith for the likes of Chumbawamba and Red Ladder Theatre, with inspiration, input and interjections from choir members.

Always quirky, always tuneful, always unexpected, Commoners has gone from strength to strength, refusing to be pigeonholed or boxed or seen as 'just another community choir'. They have performed at festivals (Musicport and Oysterband's Big Session), protests and fundraisers, they have sailed a barge along the Aire and Calder, commemorated food poverty riots, retraced the footsteps of the original Luddites, highlighted homelessness, celebrated the common land up on Ilkley Moor, challenged unfair byelaws by the use of swearing and profanity (with comedian and campaigner Mark Thomas) and celebrated the printed word with songs and cake in libraries across the North. All with a smile and a tune even yer gran could whistle. Commoners Choir, fifty members strong, are sassy, funny, angry, hopeful, rowdy, and sometimes with a poignancy that has moved people to tears.

Commoners Choir is a rag bag assortment of ne'er-do-wells, misfits, and troublemaking cake eaters who have come together from all corners of the globe to sing harmonious insurrection, to rouse the rabble and to raise a smile or two. Their album comes with a guarantee that you will never have heard a choir like itâ€¦
Tracklisting