Angeline Morrison at the 2023 Falmouth University Haunted Landscapes conference on voicing Black British ancestors through music, folk music and death, sorrow songs and more!

The Death Studies Podcast

What's the episode about?

In this episode, hear Angeline Morrison at the 2023 Falmouth University Haunted Landscapes conference on voicing Black British ancestors through music, folk music and death, W. E. B. Du Bois and sorrow songs, unregistered lives, the stories of Frances Elizabeth Johnson and Caesar, a formerly enslaved African buried in Hartlepool, as well as pet loss. Plus, highlights from the Haunted Landscapes conference.

Who is Angeline?

Angeline Morrison is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who explores traditional song with a deep love, respect and curiosity. Angeline mostly makes music in the genres of wyrd folk and psych folk, her work infused with elements of soul music, literature, ‘60s beat pop sounds, folklore, myth and the supernatural.

With a feral approach, a handmade sonic aesthetic and a belief in the importance of tenderness, Angeline’s original compositions and re-stitchings of traditional songs focus on storytelling and the small things that often go unnoticed. Sounds like solitude, memory, nostalgia, a rainy walk amongst trees...

In July 2022, Angeline was announced as the fourth winner of the prestigious Christian Raphael Prize at Cambridge Folk Festival, which generously supports the development of emerging talent in the folk genre. In December 2022 The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience was voted No 1 Folk album of the year in The Guardian.
Her album The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience (released October 2022, Topic Records) is a work of re-storying. The historic Black presence in the UK dates back to at least Roman times, yet is often hidden, forgotten or unacknowledged. The populations of enslaved African people and their descendants in the USA have their bodies of folk song, which are vitally important for containing histories, expressing feelings, giving voice and claiming presence… but the Black ancestors of the UK have no equivalent body of song. The Sorrow Songs begins to address this. It is a gift to the forgotten Black ancestors of these islands, and to the folk community here today. The album uses history and imagination to tell stories of UK Black ancestors in the sonic style of UK traditional and folk music.

What is the Haunted Landscapes conference?

Find out more about the conferences produced in association with Falmouth University’s Dark Economies Research Group here.

How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

Morrison, A. (2023) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 October 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24226096

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