5.6 Angeline Morrison: Folk Music as Storytelling

Written By Helen Forester

Welcome to series 5, episode 6 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.  THANK YOU for the 10k downloads!!

Action point: if you are giving gifts this festive season (or at any time of year!), have a look at the websites/accounts below for sustainable/homemade ideas that don’t cost the earth (literally and figuratively!). 

Onto today’s episode!

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 the Cambridge Folk Festival. Her latest 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.

In this conversation we discuss:

  • Where Angeline’s love of folk music and where that comes from

  • How her uncle instilled a love of playing and performing music

  • How she overcomes creative blocks

  • Angeline’s creative inspiration and her practice of ‘welcoming ideas’

  • The natural voice and story-telling

  • ‘Creative singing intervention’ and how the Sorrow Songs came about

  • Angeline’s concerns around creating Sorrow Songs and why she did it anyway

Just a little note about the connection in the first half of the conversation. We had a few problems and then it cut out completely. The sound quality was much better after we reconnected but it doesn’t get in the way of the interview, I don’t think.

You can find Angeline on Instagram @angelcakepie and on her website www.angelinemorrisonmusic.com You can also buy any of her EPs or albums via her Bandcamp page www.angelinemorrisonmusic.bandcamp.com 

As always, I’m over on the socials @prompted.by.nature on Insta and @promptedbynature on facebook. I have some in-person nature writing courses and day retreats up on the website too so go to www.promptedbynature.co.uk and follow the link to the events page.

Thank you once again for the 10k downloads, I’m utterly thrilled. Thank you for your support as always.

Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon, Helen x

Books mentioned in the episode (all are available on my Bookshop.org page):

Angeline's Jools Holland performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBnahOo1GBo

Episodes to accompany this one:

  • 1.7a Nana Tomova, ‘Story-telling, Mental Health and the Story Apothecary’

  • 1.13a Dawn Nelson, ‘Rewilding the Self through Storytelling’

  • 4.11a Annabel Abbs, Walking into Creativity

  • 4.13a Jackee Holder, Writing with Trees in the Urban Landscape

Happy listening!

Helen x

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Welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Angeline Morrison. A shorter one for you today - either a prompt or just an opportunity to pause for a moment and consider the wider impact of your work and creative practice.

In my conversation with Angeline, she discussed how she sees her work as one part of a whole, something that feeds into a greater body of work started generations ago and contributed to by all those working to tell the forgotten, ignored and hidden stories.

For this prompt, then, I’d love you to consider your own work as a single thread in a much bigger tapestry, or, if you’re musical like Angeline, a note in the symphony of life. This tapestry is beautiful, with every colour you can imagine, nothing is out of place and everything is as it should be. It tells the stories of nature and envisions a world in which humans and the other-than-human collaborate and dance together to create beauty and to live in a way which nourishes us all equally. The human footprint is a mere whisper of a shape in this tapestry and moves in a way that does not interfere or smother everything else but rather honours the small things, considering its impact before taking a step.

The work that you are creating is just one thread in this kaleidoscope of experience but without it, it wouldn’t be the same. Whether the thread be your words, your images, the shapes you are moulding with your hands, your voice, the way you move or any other way creativity moves through you, it is an integral part of a piece of art that extends back through time to meet our ancestors, and reaches forward to hold hands with those who will follow us, nourished by what you have created.

Take this prompt in whatever way you need or want to. Put ‘A Thread in the Tapestry’ as a title and see where it takes you; create your piece of the tapestry; or just take this as a pep talk that, whatever your art form, and whoever it is created for, it is important, it is valued and, most of all, it is a sacred part of you that affects the world in ways you will never know, whether you choose to share it or not.

Let me know what comes out if you use this one.

Happy creating!

Helen x

Helen Forester https://www.promptedbynature.co.uk
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5.7 Rebecca Beattie: ‘Rediscovering Nature’s Seasons & Cycles’
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