Songs of Hard Times: Up, Over and Through

Smart work from the good folk who run the Alan Lomax Archives – from a catalogue of sound recordings spanning 50 years and containing some 17,400 digital audio files, they have selected 20 songs about ‘trouble and adversity and ways and means of enduring and transcending them’ and made them available via Bandcamp to offer ‘comfort, diversion, and historical perspective’ in these pandemic times. There's a splendid global spread to the selections and an enormous range of stylistic diversity, all reflecting a pan-cultural spirit of human resilience.

There are songs from such legendary figures of American vernacular music as Bessie Jones, Skip James, and Dock Boggs, folk singers recorded by Lomax in rural Italy, Spain and Scotland, a 1953 recording of the Norfolk farm labourer Harry Cox singing ‘What Will Become of England?’ and the Trinidad calypsonian Growling Tiger telling us ‘Money is King’. Among the most obscure but uplifting gems is an Italian chorus singing ‘Doman L’è Festa’. It translates as ‘Tomorrow is a Holiday’ and the children's voices are a welcome beacon of hope for a better future.