'Daughters of Albion' at the Barbican

What a horrible venue! A concrete and plastic monstrosity in the middle of an urban jungle. Not a good setting for folk music, you might think, and the sell out crowd of hippies young and old didn't look very comfortable. Bill and I hadn't eaten, but there was a queue for the cafe and a bouncer on the door.
However the seats were nice and confortable, and we had a good view despite being in the cheap seats, on the far left at the front. We could see the artists arriving on stage, and as the BBC were recording, were being filmed each time clapping in the background.
The Daughters of Albion were June Tabor, Norma Waterson, Eliza Carthy, Kathryn Williams, Sheila Chandra & Lou Rhodes, with a surprise appearance from Vashti Bunyan. Far from being enslav'd and weeping as in the Blake poem, the ladies were feisty and romantic, performing a variety of songs, some from women composers such as Lal Waterson, Kirsty MacColl and PJ Harvey, some written themselves, and some anonymous traditional songs from the women's perspective. Eliza Carthy was an excellent compere and my favourite of the seven - she has such a powerful, expressive voice and cheerful stage presence. Hadn't seen Sheila Chandra before - she used to be in a band called Monsoon whom I'd vaguely heard of - but was very impressed with her version of Reynardine. Kathryn Williams was very heavily pregnant, and did a rather breathy version of 'This Woman's Work' which is apparently about childbirth. Lucky her waters DIDN'T break on stage - that would have been embarrassing!!
June Tabor sang accompanied by the piano, which I don't quite agree with - it's not a folk instrument, not unless it's a badly-tuned pub joanna! But enjoyed her version of Lili Marlene. Norma Warterson was very good as well, although Eliza did tend to drown her out during their duets. Lou Rodes has a lovely deep voice, think she should have put her shoes on, there's a lot of discarded takeaways and dog poo on the streets of London! Vashti Bunyan was a bit disappointing, she only had a weak voice and she made a mistake during her song, coming in too early on one line. Perhaps she was just nervous though.
The concert had a great atmosphere - you could see that the performers liked and supported each other - and it was nice to feel the sisterly vibes coming from the audience as well.
The ladies got a standing ovation at the end, well deserved too!