22 | June 13, 2013 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News
The headliners Music
O
VER Earl Grey tea and tinkling jazz music, John Rees is attempting to explain Cambridgeshire and what it means to him. Unfortunately, it’s a much tougher task than it sounds. “To define Cambridgeshire is incredibly difficult,” he says matter of factly, but that hasn’t stopped him trying. John is the founder of Hobson’s Voice, a 13-strong folk group made up of singers and musicians largely from Over, just on the edge of the Fens. They began to emerge as a group more than seven years ago, but have grown from just three or four members and now feature professional singers, students, composers, dance tutors and even a postman, who play a range of instruments, from folk staples to harmonicas, mandolins, ukuleles, accordions, flutes and kazoos. It all began when John, who has been a bit of a folkster since the Sixties, began singing lessons with professional soprano and teacher Kate Woolf, after joining a male voice choir. “One day, I don’t know how or why, a song came into my head and I said to Kate ‘can I sing this song? Can you help me improve to sing? Because I’d like to go and sing it in a local pub on one of the open evenings’ and that’s how it all started,” John explains with a wry smile. “It was a song about something local called the A14, the pretty A14. . .” He began looking for more ideas for songs, but already had some stored up thanks to a rather extensive interest in local history. “I knew there were already some stories that I wanted from Cambridge and Cambridgeshire and the Fenlands to make into songs at some point. Particularly one about an event in 1943, December 16, when, from Bourn Airfield and around here, a lot of aeroplanes left from the Pathfinder’s Squadron – it was a foggy night – and when they came back eight aircraft from Bourn were lost on trying to land. “During the war, of course, nothing was said about this because everything was kept silent, it’s one of those moving, silent things in local history.” As a memorial, John penned The Fields of Cambridgeshire, a haunting commemorative piece (“There’s always silence at the end of it when I sing it,”), that triggered a desire to form a collective singing group that would preserve some of Cambridgeshire’s forgotten stories. Hobson’s Voice’s first CD, released in 2009, was called Bicycle City Light Blues, and told tales of Fen tigers, city stable yards and Mill Road Winter Fair. “That was certainly experimental,” says John, describing how, since then, it has been Fenland songs and stories that have filtered into their repertoire; hence the new album, Fen Folk. The songs on the album swerve from nostalgic and commemorative to satirical and jaunty, with some that are quite amusing. Muffin, Cupcake, Fairycake, Beef Cake explores how “idioms are
Writer: Ella Walker ella.walker@cambridge-news.co.uk
Hobson’s Voice:
A mix of music, history and legend, Hobson’s Voice transform the stories of Cambridgeshire into community folk with heart. ELLA WALKER finds out more.
generational as well as geographical, they are also from different parts of history,” and asks why we’ve let the humble fairy cake bow to the hunky beef cake of sponge-based bakery goods; the American cupcake. The Fen stereotypes are turned on their head in jazzy track Fen Bones: “Fen people had the reputation, in the old days, because of the malaria that was here and arthritis and rheumatism because of the climate, of not being the most beautiful people in the world. A bit gnarled and twisted and very argumentative, very curmudgeonly.” While Flash Swan is inspired by the true story of a swan exploding over John’s head after it flew into a tangle of electricity wires. You can just imagine the singed feathers cascading down. Almost all of the songs on the album are written by John, although the stories and many of the tunes have been “collected in the folk tradition, from other people.” This includes older members of the Over community who offered tales of farm labourers renting out chairs when the lake between Swavesey and Over would freeze over (Skating Blades), and of rabbit stew sandwiches made by
German prisoners of war who were put to work draining the Fen for farmland (Grey Feather). “In some ways Grey Feather is the most important song of the whole lot,” John enthuses. “It’s the whole history of creating the Fens, but also brings in human stories.” There are also snippets of ancient folk songs given a Cambridgeshire or Fenland twist: “In the folk tradition you hear a song and you localise it,” (have a listen to Tunes for Molly Dances, Alice Crutchfield and bonus track, My Johnny Was A Shoemaker). “All of these [songs] are stories with maybe a little reflection here or there, that of course has relevance to them [the listener] and relevance to Cambridgeshire. But beyond that, I think Cambridgeshire is such a hard place to define,” John admits. “Cambridgeshire, it’s amorphous.” What he does know is that Fen Folk wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been able to get down on paper track 8, Oliver Cromwell. “The whole thing was waiting, waiting, for Oliver Cromwell to come into my head. Lots and lots and lots of tunes and songs and words come into my head but, like an iceberg, only the tip of the iceberg is worth keeping.”
Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | June 13, 2013 | 23
FYI: One of the youngest members of Hobson’s Voice, pianist Alex Woolf, was crowned BBC Young Composer of the Year 2012
The true heart of Hobson’s Voice is the communal side of performing. Although John isn’t a trained musician, he explains: “I’m much more a words person, but I do like music with tunes. Tunes that you can sing, tunes that can be memorised, parts of tunes that are good for communal singing and that’s very important to me. It’s where my grandfather came from in terms of his thinking. He was born in the 1880s long before there were all these recordings. “So a lot of these, when you are singing them, you find people are singing them with you, and you’re like: that’s it! That’s exactly the point!” “Although, this may sound strange,” he pauses. “Although I wrote them, although we’ve done this – these are not my songs, these are not our songs, these are Cambridgeshire songs, they belong to everybody. “Heritage is for sharing.” The communal aspect of the group’s music makes it a perfect fit for WI meetings, village fairs and for local heritage groups, but they’ll play for anyone else who really wants to hear what they do. “It’s not bang-thump-thumpthump and chat-chat smoke-drink blah,” says John animatedly. “It’s [for] people who want to listen. People who want to be entertained by something intelligent.” He adds: “It is modern, it is folk. I call what we do ‘concert-party folk’. It’s not off the cuff, it’s not that, but it is not pretentious either. I know as soon as I feel pretentious that no, that’s the bottom of the iceberg.” They are also not interested in making money,
ᔡ To order a copy of Fen Folk or to enquire about booking Hobson’s Voice for a performance, contact John Rees at john.rees3@btinternet.com or visit www.hobsons-voice.co.uk. All proceeds from the album will go to Centre 33, the Cambridge charity supporting young people and carers, and St Mary’s, Over. ᔡ Hobson’s Voice will next perform on Sunday, June 30 at Sutton Feast Village Day at noon.
with all sales of the album going to local charities, namely St Mary’s Over and Cambridge’s young carers charity, Centre 33, “Which is a charity particularly dear to my heart,” says John. What does he want people to take away from Fen Folk? “Time after time, whether we’ve been out in Cambridgeshire or south in the Fens, people have come up and talked about their experiences, their parents’ experiences, their grandparents’ experiences, have said ‘yes, we have got our stories’, Cambridgeshire has got its stories and they are our lives. “It’s about trying to help make our heritage live and make people proud and to talk about it, and share it. Not as something quaint and pretentious; our memories and our hopes are real, and this is for people in Cambridgeshire, and for people outside Cambridgeshire. Other counties: you’ve got your folk music, these are our stories. “I want people to be drawn together in a modern and ancient way; in another way of looking at Cambridgeshire, another way of helping us give us our sense of identity,” he enthuses. “It’s a chance in this moving history to identify a little bit for a moment, before things are lost.”
Picture James O’Mara
“I think Cambridgeshire is such a hard place to define. Cambridgeshire, it’s amorphous”
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