Reg Meuross brings his slave trade song cycle to Middleton Hall, Hull, on 8 October, with Jeffrey Boakye narrating. Doors 6pm, show 7.30pm, tickets online.

Folk singer Reg Meuross is bringing Stolen From God, his song cycle about England’s part in the transatlantic trade in enslaved people, to Middleton Hall at the University of Hull on Thursday 8 October.

The concert is part of Black History Month. Doors open at 6pm and the show starts at 7.30pm. Middleton Hall is on Cottingham Road in Hull (HU6 7RX), just over the East Riding boundary.

The author and broadcaster Jeffrey Boakye returns as narrator for the Hull performance. Meuross plays with a live trio that puts English folk instrumentation alongside West African kora:

  • Reg Meuross: songs, vocals and guitar
  • Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne: concertina
  • Modou Ndiaye Cissokho: kora; the release also calls him a griot
  • Jeffrey Boakye: narration

The details come from a press release sent to East Riding Today by Andy Hill, who is promoting the tour, and from the concert poster.

Four years of research

The press release describes the show as “a four-year investigation into some of the less comfortably remembered corners of British history” and calls it a “deeply researched live song cycle”.

The songs were released as an album in April 2023. Its sleeve note on Bandcamp, by the writer Mike Davies, says Meuross went through family trees, church records and oral histories handed down through generations. According to that note, the songs cover:

  • how Sir Francis Drake and John Hawkins helped establish the trade
  • how it underpinned the English economy of the 17th century
  • the first petition to abolish slavery, which the note says came from Bridgwater
  • Edward Colston, the Bristol merchant the note says was involved in transporting some 80,000 Africans

The note says the songs are sung “in the voices of both those outraged by slavery and those enslaved”. It describes Meuross as Somerset-based, and says the album looks most closely at the trade’s legacy in his own South West of England.

Reg Meuross holding an acoustic guitar against a whitewashed wall
Reg Meuross with his acoustic guitar. Photo: Natalie Shaw, supplied by Andy Hill

A song about Colston

Andy Hill pointed readers to one track as a “quick listen”: Good Morning Mr Colston, which Meuross released as a single in December 2022, ahead of the album.

Good Morning Mr Colston, from Stolen From God. Listen on Bandcamp, or hear the full album.

Meuross has written about this city before. Hill says he created 12 Silk Handkerchiefs around Hull’s triple-trawler disaster and Lilian Bilocca. That album came out in September 2018, according to his Bandcamp discography.

The Hull date is one of a run of autumn shows. His Bandcamp listing has it between Birmingham on 7 October and Todmorden on 9 October.

What the reviewers said

The poster carries four short quotes about the album:

  • ”…one of the most important albums of the 21st century.” (Mike Davies)
  • ”…evidence that music can be used to speak truth to power.” (FATEA)
  • “A very powerful album of songs… an important piece of work.” (Mike Norris, Classic Folk)
  • “Ambitious, often unsettling.” (The Guardian)
Poster for Reg Meuross, Stolen From God, a folk song cycle about England and the transatlantic trade of enslaved people, at Middleton Hall, Hull University, on Thursday 8 October, doors 6pm, show 7.30pm
The poster for the Hull concert. Poster: supplied by Andy Hill

What it means for you

If you want to go:

  • When: Thursday 8 October. Doors 6pm, show 7.30pm.
  • Where: Middleton Hall, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX.
  • Tickets and information: at regmeuross.com/tour and on WeGotTickets, or by phone on 07832 200980, all as given on the poster.

The press release and poster do not give a ticket price, so check when you book. For more to do across the area this autumn, see our things to do in East Yorkshire page and what’s on in Beverley.