Shovel Dance Collective

Shovel Dance Collective is a nine-member group whose arrangements weave traditional songs with group improvisation, field recordings and tape manipulation. This concert takes place at The Caves in Edinburgh.

Shovel Dance Collective is a group of nine members who share an interest in traditional music, which they regard as a source of beauty, force and political charge. Their work is built as a patchwork: traditional material is stitched together with group improvisations, explorations of field recordings and tape manipulation in the manner of concrète sound.

Their arrangements lean on the hopeful and human side of folk, carrying both joy and sadness in words and melodies shaped collaboratively. Dense orchestration sits alongside passages of deliberate fragility. The music is concerned with how traditional songs keep alive the voices of earlier generations, of the oppressed, and of those whose labour creates the wealth of the world.

The Caves is a venue in Edinburgh that hosts concerts and shows, and this evening is one of its live music programmes.