Dorset Music

Something, hopefully, uplifting for the end of the year! It came to the attention of folk on the PJ Harvey fan boards that back in the early 1990s she'd taken uncharacteristic part in an overtly feminist music project, the Brilliant Birthdays choir, based in Salisbury. The organiser was Sammy Hurden, who you can see in the only photograph of the choir publicly available, holding the guitar, with the young Polly to the right of the girl in the stripy top. Ms Hurden and PJH obviously kept in touch with one another, because she appears among the voices on 'The Colour of the Earth', the last track from the mighty Let England Shake, and, so the sleeve notes imply, organised the other voices. 

Perhaps this isn't a surprise, as Ms Hurden hasn't moved very far from West Dorset, so she would have been around for that very Dorset-based recording. Her website relates her ongoing work with community choirs, gathering and coaching people to sing pieces that evoke the landscape around them. 'The Chalk Legends', part of the cultural side of the 2012 Olympics for which Weymouth was one of the locations, took singers and musicians to St Catherine's Chapel at Abbotsbury and the church of St George Reforne on Portland. 

You can't get more Dorset than The Hare and the Harp, though. It was inspired by a medieval carving in the County Museum in Dorchester, and was performed in Powerstock church - the piece is in the key of the bells which are rung in the background throughout the songs. It's not just the beauty of the landscape and the woven depth of history which makes this piece so moving, though, but (despite the bolstering presence of a few professional musicians) the commitment you see here to getting ordinary people to make music. A very happy new year to you all.