Ray Hearne’s songs of South Yorkshire.

The Sound article before last was about Joseph Mather. This issue's is about Ray Hearne, who has made an enormous contribution to the tradition of radical song in South Yorkshire through countless live shows over the last 30 years. Hearne was brought up in the Parkgate area of Rotherham. The son of Irish immigrants, he was steeped in the folk tradition and, like Mather, uses its centuries-crafted tunes as the scaffolding for distinctly contemporary content. The parallels don’t end there: both balladeers try to make the folk tradition speak to (and for) the specific locality of South Yorkshire and its industrial past and present; both adopt an unabashedly radical stance and repeatedly return to the importance of working-class representation; both combine a radical internationalism with a proudly local focus; and both achieve a potent mixture of melancholy and humour in their songs. Hearne’s two albums to date - Broad Street Ballads and The Wrong Sunshine - are on the No Masters Co-operative label, which promotes the development of traditional and radical songwriting. The long list of folk luminaries who have performed and recorded Hearne’s songs - including Kate Rusby, Roy Bailey and Coope, Boyes & Simpson - is testament to his craft as a songwriter. Hearne himself is a great performer, yarning between songs with warmth and humour. His delivery is crisp and crystal clear in his beautiful Rotherham accent and he switches skilfully between seriousness and a warm, humorous tone. Recent songs include one about a murder in Attercliffe and one about the annual mock beach in the centre of Rotherham. Hearne is adept at tackling serious global issues in a way that grounds them in local experience. The Wrong Sunshine features two of the best songs about the Iraq war you’re ever likely to hear. ‘Baghdad-on-Dearne’ graphically captures the traumas of war from the perspective of a soldier. The infantryman’s nightmare visions make up the verses and these are set against a chorus that evokes everyday opposition to the war and a sense of resignation at its inevitable grim logic. Hearne wraps up what could so easily be the banal “will they never learn love?” in the everyday warmth of a bus stop conversation in Broad Street: “Will they never learn, love, will they never learn?” The chorus reflects the down-to-earth decency of ordinary people’s responses to a brutal and unpopular war. ‘March of the Daffodils’ skilfully weaves the 24-hour rolling news representation of 21^st century shock and awe warfare with the slower rhythms of the passage of seasons at home. Hearne draws on the well-worn poetic pedigree of the daffodil but turns it into a fresh and hard-hitting image of the globalised nature of conflict and communication. The song’s first verse exemplifies its energy and contrast: Baghdad’s a bigger bad body-bag than even last night Slowly the cistern fills Till under the sound-bites suddenly it’s light upon light Here come the daffodils Over the unseethroughable mind-high hills Here come the daffodils The daffodils become grim reminders of the indifference of nature to human suffering and at the same time emblems of hope for new life emerging out of the barrenness of winter. Part of what is so hard-hitting about Hearne’s war songs is his disarming honesty in dealing directly with the war's effect on him. “I need my late news fix every wine-dark night” - that sense of the need to bear witness, coupled with powerlessness and resignation, is one familiar to the millions in Britain who were anti-war. But Hearne is far from just a protest singer. Other songs on The Wrong Sunshine deal with work (‘The Long Song Line’, ‘The Navvy Boys’ and ‘The Collier’s Elegy’), grief (‘Well’ is about the death of his father) and artistic inspiration emerging out of post-industrial renewal (‘Manvers Island Bound’). ‘Pudding Burner’ celebrates the hard work and resilience of women in the steel industry and ‘Things to Say’ is dedicated to Doncaster Advocacy, a charity that supports adults with learning disabilites. This is perhaps the unifying principal of all Hearne’s songs: he tries to give a voice to ordinary people, to reflect the lives of working-class people in South Yorkshire and to foster a sense of shared cultural identity inherited from a rich and important history. Hearne has said that it was the vicious policies of the Thatcher government that initially galvanised him to write radical songs about contemporary society. In the age of austerity we need his conviction, his compassion and his voice more than ever. rayhearne.co.uk )