Human Cargo

is the name of an exceptional  song-and-story performance that I would urge anyone who has the opportunity to catch. It came to Cardigan tonight and will be travelling to other venues in the UK , linking up with refugee support groups at each.
It's a two-man piece. Matthew Crampton, the writer, tells stories he has stitched together from events past and present, all connected by the theme of expulsion, migration and loss (or hiraeth as we say in Wales.) The tales he so movingly relates demonstrate how today's refugees have been preceded in history by the forced exile of slaves (black and white), convicts, paupers, indentured labourers and dispossessed peasants. All grieved  their losses  and  mourned their struggles  in songs that have been passed down the generations. Many of these are familiar to us still as gospel songs, shanties and ballads and in the show they are beautifully rendered by renowned American folk singer Jeff Warner. His own parents were among those collectors who in many instances recorded the tunes in the very communities that had preserved them.

Matthew Crampton is a magnetic story-teller who has unearthed little-known or forgotten accounts of  captivity and forced migration. At the same time he draws the parallels with today's refugees who also travel by land and sea to unknown destinations and random fates, leaving behind homes and families and taking little more than memories, language and music. In each venue Matthew includes a reference to local refugee support groups (Cardigan is one of several communities in West Wales that has sponsored a refugee family) and tonight he  also namechecked a young Kurdish man who fled  Syria and eventually found himself the opportunity to further his education in Cardigan; in return providing Arabic interpretation when needed.

Human Cargo is touring to Bristol, Torrington, Newcastle, Beverley, Liverpool, Shoreham, Exeter, Dorchester, Halesworth, London, Matlock and Bedford over the next month and I'd urge anyone to get to see it.
Go here for details of the show and also Matthew Crampton's book of the same name.

Extra: Jeff Warner sings one song with a jig doll or clogging man such as I last saw 10 years ago in Virginia. performed by another master of the art.