Representations of Place in Music

Steve Knightly

by Dr Heather Skinner

I have always been interested in folk music, from being introduced to Welsh folk songs at school, and then through attendances at folk clubs in my teens, to much more recently when I ran a folk music club in my local town before I emigrated to Corfu in 2013. Around 15 years ago, at a folk festival in the South West of England, I first encountered the duo “Show of Hands”, although Steve Knightley and Phil Beer had been performing together as Show of Hands since the mid-1980s, and have performed as a trio with Miranda Sykes on and off since 2004. Show of Hands performs and records a mix of traditional and original songs. Apart from the sheer exuberance of the performers, what really struck me about their music was the inextricable link between their songs and the places about which the lyrics related. Indeed, the band’s own Facebook page stresses that “being rooted in Devon and the West Country … is part of the very fabric of this band and our material is closely entwined with its social history and geography”. Continue reading “Representations of Place in Music”