Shovel Dance Collective

Shovel Dance Collective is a nine-member group whose work builds on traditional music, combining folk arrangements with group improvisation, field recordings and tape manipulation, performing at New Century in Manchester.

Shovel Dance Collective is a group of nine members who share an interest in traditional music, both for its beauty and strength and for its political charge. Their work assembles fragments of traditional material, stitched together with group improvisations that develop over time, explorations of field recordings and tape manipulation in the concrète tradition.

The arrangements lean towards the warmth, optimism and human side of folk. Words and melodies shaped collectively carry both joy and grief, and the music is built on dense orchestration balanced against moments of delicate fragility. A recurring idea running through the work is that traditional songs pass on the voices of earlier generations, of those who were oppressed, and of workers whose labour produces the wealth of the world.

The concert takes place at New Century, a Manchester venue that hosts concerts and shows.