HARVEST HOME
Words
and Music from a Traditional Harvest
with
For hundreds of
years, the harvest was the climax of the agricultural year - the time marked by
heaviest labour and most intense celebration for the whole community.
Music played an important part in this season of work.
As harvesters cut and bound the sheaves, and during their short periods
of rest at mealtimes, old songs made their customary appearance and new tunes
were learnt from migrant workers. Customs
and tasks of the harvest field were depicted in songs. And when the harvest was
eventually gathered, there was song and music at the huge supper that was
Harvest Home. It's an image that
stays with us. Even today, when
crops are cut by machine, the metaphor of the communal harvest recurs powerfully
in contemporary song.
Harvest Home
uses the voices of participants to draw a picture in words and music of the work
of harvesting - the excitement of a first chance to earn an adult wage and the
arrival of new faces to 'take the corn', the 'downright slavery' of threshing,
the toasts and singing of the 'harvest frolic',
gale beer, cakes and new boots for the children, and the bloody harvest
of the First War. It includes
stories and songs, histories of old customs and even a recipe.
Written by Georgina Boyes, Harvest Home features Coope,
Boyes and Simpson, Fi Fraser and Jo Freya of Old Swan Band, Token Women and The
Fraser Sisters.
Originally commissioned
by Sidmouth International Festival of Folk Music for performance at the Pavilion
Theatre, Harvest Home has toured widely and a version of
the production adapted for radio, featuring songs and music by Martin
Carthy, Eliza Carthy, Coope, Boyes and Simpson, Fi Fraser and Georgina Boyes was
also broadcast on BBC Radio 2.
CONTACT -
REVIEWS
"The
folklorist, Georgina Boyes, has come up with a splendid seasonal pot pourri
celebrating the gathering of the crops. For
centuries, the security of knowing the community larder was stocked for another
year sparked off the most important jollification of the rural social calendar.
Harvest Home roams through the vast stock of song,
superstition and story that has accrued down the centuries.
It also recalls the tough labour that often preceded the party."
The Guardian.
Coope Boyes & Simpson,
Fi Fraser, Jo Freya and
The singing, unaccompanied throughout, was simply
magnificent, making this show a real festive treat.