Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne
Play Up The Music!
(Grimdon Records)

COHEN BRAITHWAITE-KILCOYNE has been charming and engaging folk audiences over the last 10 years as part of the trio Granny’s Attic, and also as a solo performer.

His third solo album explores the way English traditional folk songs have travelled over and then changed to become part of the musical traditions of the Caribbean and black America.

Having maternal grandparents who were part of the Windrush generation, and visiting family in Barbados 20 years ago, Braithwaite-Kilcoyne heard a band playing traditional Bajan folk music but their set included an old English folk tune The Keel Row.

This started an interest in links in folk music and, in 2020, he was commissioned by the English Folk Dance and Song Society to write a school music resource on the theme of black music in the Americas. 

Also drawing from conversations with British Caribbean musicians the album shines a light on the way English folk songs have been developed further by black singers in the US and the Caribbean.

The title comes from a folk tale about Anansi the spider and the opening song Tacoma’s Round is based on a Jamaican tale but the verses also relate to an English song The Keys of Canterbury.

This is followed by a medley of children’s ring game songs from Barbados and then the Child ballad Sweet William and Lady Margaret but from a version by a black American singer Sinda Walker collected by Cecil Sharp in 1917.

There are many variants of the song Hangman Slack On The Line, about a young maid or man on the gallows with extremely unhelpful relatives, but this version comes from a 1925 book by Dorothy Scarborough of African-American folk songs.

O Sailor Boy is an enjoyable Trinidad version of Soldier, Soldier but with a more modern setting where the sweet maid does not go to her grandfather’s chest but gets in a car to buy clothes for the unworthy subject of her affections.

As interest in this project started in Barbados there are also some Bajan folk songs collected from Trevor Marshall, Peggy McGeary and Grace Thompson’s Folk Songs of Barbados. Ending with Cocoa Tea, a popular song in Barbados, this album is a fascinating example of how the universal themes of folk song can travel and adapt.

Play Up the Music! is on tour until October 11. For more information see: cohenbk.com.