The Imagined Village

The Imagined Village
at Theatre Royal, Norwich,as part of Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2012

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 25 May 2012.

Musical collaboration project Imagined Village brought some of the freshest, most innovative intercultural fusion and evolution of traditional folk into alt-rock and morris-bhangra around.

Folk legend Martin Carthy and his daughter Eliza led the 10-piece outfit who continuously push at the boundaries of folk. They work collectively, together tweaking and reinventing old songs and each others’ new material.

They updated My Son John, an old war song, making it a political statement about today’s conflicts. Word-of-mouth narratives like The Captain’s Apprentice rubbed shoulders with new edgy material about ‘culture in crisis’ such as The Guvnor, Fisherman and The Sick Old Man.

Their evolutionary technique was powerfully applied to Bjork’s Birthday, the ‘sinister lullaby’ Next, Billy Bragg’s Hard Times of Old England, a Cornish dance tune and their contribution to the Cultural Olympiad, Bending the Dark from their new album.

Dualling-complementary fiddles, drums and hand percussion, cello, double bass, keyboards and guitars played with ideas and painted moods, with clever use of sound effects and some earthy singing all made this a night to remember.