Songs of praise for Darwin

Eight of the world’s top folk musicians locked themselves away at a Shropshire country house to write a tribute tune in honour of Charles Darwin. Andy Richardson found out how they got on.

The sun is shining summerbright on the lawns of Henley Farmhouse, near Acton Scott. Late-flowering snowdrops and vivid yellow daffodils add colour and warmth to this idyllic rural scene, as a playful black lurcher bounds through the fields.

Across the undulating lawns, an oak-beamed house with quarry-tiled floors is a hive of activity. This is where eight of the world’s best folk-music writers are living, breathing, eating, sleeping and singing Darwin for one week. They are a select few, chosen to take part in the Darwin Song Project, which celebrates Shropshire’s great scientist in song.

Neil Pearson is mooching across the lawn, catching up with the artists that he invited to this extraordinary event. He is wearing a flowery, lilac shirt that looks as though it was made by Paul Smith.

“It’s from Monsoon,” he laughs.

“But I’m glad you like it.”

More than a year ago, he approached 16 artists to see whether they would participate.

He says: “I realised it was the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. However, I didn’t realise how big a deal it would be. It really has become a huge event, it’s part of the zeitgeist.”

The 16 songwriters that were approached by Pearson surprised him with their enthusiasm.

“I thought half would say no,” he says.

In fact, they all said yes, and Neil then faced the tricky dilemma of choosing eight. Neil went for a mix of youth and experience with young guns like Stu Hanna alongside the venerable Chris Wood.

Pearson approached Shropshire County Council, Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council and Alan Surtees, the organiser of Shrewsbury Folk Festival.

Everyone I spoke to loved the idea and offered their support,” he said.

A year later, Pearson’s project has become a reality. Today, some of the finest folk-music writers in the world are gathered around a table, eating vegetable chilli, explaining the reasons for taking part.

Rachael McShane, a triple BBC Folk Award winner, was the first to arrive. She made the long trek down from her native North East on Friday.

“When I got here, there was nobody else at all,” she laughs.

“I was first out of the traps. I’d been studying Darwin a lot, since being asked. I’d got a lot of information on my iPhone, so I was able to read about him whenever I liked.”

The songwriters, perhaps unsurprisingly, approached the project in the most creative of ways. McShane chose not to focus on his enduring legacy. Instead, she wanted to write about the worry he caused his devoted wife, Emma.

She says: “There was a lot of tragedy in their lives and his health failed as he grew older. He would have sat up for long hours working, which would have caused worry to Emma. I wanted to focus on that aspect.”

Jez Lowe, a singer/songwriter who has appeared regularly in Shropshire, wanted to focus on a peripheral character called Jemmy Button.

“I read about him in the Voyage of the Beagle,” he says.

Button was a native Fuegian of the Yaghan people from islands around Tierra del Fuego, in modern Chile and Argentina. He was brought to England by Captain FitzRoy on the HMS Beagle and became a celebrity for a period.

“Most of my songs tend to be about working-class people, so initially I struggled to have much sympathy with the middle-class Darwin family. But then I came across Button. I wanted to write a story that basically was from the perspective of his wife. You know, he’s been gone for three months on the HMS Beagle and his wife is saying ‘Where’ve you been, you’re tea’s been in the oven. Come home now’.”

Others took a different approach. Karine Polwart, a philosophy post-graduate and one of the UK’s best known folk musicians, identified closely with the Shropshire scientist. She even took an Open University module on Darwin, to learn more.

She says: “He was incredibly close to his family. A lot of the things that I read about him doing made me think ‘That’s just what my father would have done’.”

Mark Erelli, an American singer/songwriter cast in the mould of Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen and with a Masters Degree in Evolutionary Biology, wrote about the differences between Darwin and his wife. One was a fervent believer in God, the other not so.

“Imagine that,” he says.

“He loved Emma and tried so hard to believe, just for her. But he couldn’t. Most married couples argue about the simplest of things. They were arguing about the existence of God and whether or not there was an afterlife.”

Krista Detor, a piano-playing American singer/songwriter, found a different perspective. She was inspired by Darwin’s closeness to his family and by the stories of those around him, including Emma’s links with the celebrated composer Frederic Chopin.

Tonight the residents of Shropshire will hear for the first time the fruits of the Darwin Song Project. The eight artists will perform at Theatre Severn. As well as immersing themselves in his life, they have visited Shrewsbury on a Darwin tour, dined in the town, and even spent several hours with Randal Hume Keynes OBE, the British conservationist who is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin.

The concert will be recorded and cut as a CD. BBC Radio 2 will feature the project on the Mike Harding show on April 8, BBC Radio Shropshire will feature it this Sunday between 8pm and 10pm while BBC 4 will also broadcast a programme about it. The artists will reconvene in August to play the songs at Shrewsbury Music Festival.

The final word falls to the celebrated British folk musician Chris Wood: “We’re all supposed to be artists who write through a veil of tears,” he says.

“But this week has been an incredible experience. Being here, in a beautiful house, with some of the best writers in the world . . . Well, really, it doesn’t get any better than this.”

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