Put a Donk On It!

Laura Barton's Notes from a Musical Island

The music writer Laura Barton visits four corners of Britain and listens closely to the music found in different landscapes. Crossing into Lancashire through the Upper Calder Valley, Laura visits the Great Bride Stones with musician and cultural geographer Rob St John, who's attuned to the unique sound qualities of this rural-industrial landscape. Then she visits the Queen Street Mill Museum in Burnley and meets Colin, a weaver of fifty years and lover of elegiac Vaughan Williams, and listens to the loom-inspired music of Chaines. She musically unpicks the origins of Donk, a high bpm (beats per minute) dance style unique to the North-West, with Tony Sabanskis of The Blackout Crew, and attends a band practice of a former colliery brass band, a more traditional musical emblem that flourishes still in post-industrial Haydock. Produced by Alan Hall. A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4