Lady Maisery and Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith
Wakefire: A Summer Album
(LM Records)
★★★★★

This collaboration by Lady Maisery (Hannah James, Rowan Rheingans and Hazel Askew) and Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith follows on from their wintertime project Awake Arise. Released on May Day this year, the new album celebrates the coming of summer with 27 tracks in an attractive book format with pictures and stories to accompany the songs.

The opening track Summer’s In starts with the end of spring and is a reworking of a song by Anne Briggs with some additional verses by Hannah James. Followed by The Cuckoo, a children’s rhyme set to music by Benjamin Britten, this leads us onto the English folk tradition’s celebration of May Day with Sid Goldsmith’s memories of thousands lining the streets in Padstow in On May Morning. Following The Old Oss And Padstow May Song sings of the collective celebration of a community welcoming the coming of May.

However as readers of this paper know May Day is also International Workers’ Day and the need for political struggle to defend our collective rights comes over in May Day written by Rowan Rheingans. Interspersed with a recording of a hostile news commentary of a past London May Day march the song asks the question Which Side Are You On?

We go through midsummer with traditional songs like Staines Morris and Sweet Lemeney but there are also songs celebrating summer from other parts of the world with the Swedish shepherding song Limu and the dance celebration Mikaelidagen as well as a Latvian song Ligo celebrating the longest day.

Songs by more contemporary artists are represented by Leon Rosselson’s The Ant and the Grasshopper, Robin Williamson’s Good as Gone and an a Capella version of Ivor Cutler’s I’m Going in a Field. There are also songs warning of environmental destruction in Jimmy Aldridge’s Aftermath and Bela Fleck’s song about climate change What’cha Gonna Do.

But summer has always been a source of celebration for working people despite the difficulties of the world around. Fires takes us back to the 14th century and the tradition of midsummer fire-making giving the reason for the album’s title and looking towards summer’s end we have Harvest Song alongside Laurie Lee’s depictions of our landscape.

This album provides an opportunity both to celebrate summer and to recognise the political and environmental challenges we face.

Lady Maisery are on tour in Britain until July 25. For dates and tickets see: ladymaisery.com.