NNF 2021 - The People’s Cabaret
For years the N&N festival has leaned heavily on the second “N”, with Norwich taking the lion’s share of performances, created a feeling that the festival is only notionally county wide. In this year’s pared down, socially distant event it both heartening and surprising that the event has managed to spread its wings a little, opening up the Corn Hall in Diss, a hidden gem of a venue, to patrons unused to trekking into deepest, darkest South Norfolk.
In an evening of firsts, Jessica Walker’s People’s Cabaret was the first performance of a cycle of songs she has written with Luke Styles. It was also the first performance at the Corn Hall since lockdown, and very nearly the first performance of the Norwich and Norfolk festival. Perhaps most significantly, it was the first time she has sung in front of a live audience, and the first time that the audience had been sung to, for over a year. To say the evening was loading with significance is something of an understatement.
The People’s Cabaret is a work in progress, with this premier intended as seed corn from which a bigger, bolder event will emerge through community involvement. We were promised more musicians, more singers and even a choir in the future, but for now had to be content with a stripped back, lean offering from the considerable talents of Walker on voice and Ian Watson on accordion. Walker confessed to feeling nauseous at the prospect of performing to a live audience, with worries ranging from her voice holding up to remembering the words. On both counts, her concerns were misplaced. This was a polished, note perfect outing for a fine signer, with a style that hovered somewhere between the operatic and a chanteuse. If anything, songs such as Guthrie’s I ain’t Got No Home or Weill’s Pirate Jenny could have done with a little roughing up around the edges, but one had to admire Walker’s robust take on what she can sing and how she chooses to sing it.
There is no denying, either, the audacious bravado of juxtaposing seminal works from the likes of Eisler, Spoliansky and Hollaender with new compositions, explicitly twining themes and ideas. It’s a clever idea, and when it worked, it was to telling effect. By far the strongest new work was Viral, a personal and heart breaking account of the death of a close friend. Its strength, however, highlighted the weakness of some of the other songs. As Walker was quick to acknowledge, there is a difficult balance to strike when speaking of injustice, when you are not the victim, and while the sentiments behind Glass Floor were no doubt sincerely felt, a song about an office cleaner’s raw deal felt confected and dangerously close to patronizing. Far better was Park Man, in that it at least explored the inherent difficulty of exploring social issues from a position of relative security, while Monumental neatly side stepped cultural appropriation by speaking from the perspective a slave trader’s statue.
Noticeable by its absence in all of these songs was humour, and that struck me as a great pity. Speaking afterwards, both Walker and Watson came across as personal and humane people, keen to create something of value. But the conditions under which the material was created obviously weighed heavily on their shoulders, with Walker at one point bleakly pointing out she felt little hope while engaged in the process. It shows, and is possibly well founded, but I don’t think it led to a greater truth. The European composers they presented raged against racism, oppression and injustice, but did so in a way that was imbued with mordant wit and wry circumspection. Lavender Song is by a gay man consumed with righteous indignation, and is all the more acute for its sanguine observations. Life’s a Swindle similarly benefits from a pragmatic, and shameless, celebration of moral ambivalence.
Life is funny, even in tragedy, and this earnest work lacked a spark that would have brought it to life. It is, nonetheless, an ambitious project, and if they pull it off, they could return to the festival with something of real worth. I hope they really do go into communities, and really do listen to what folk say. If so, I think they’ll re-examine what was presented, understand it was created in the most trying of circumstances, and ultimately elbow it out of the way, in favour of more nuanced, and ultimately more substantial material.
