Jennifer Reid, pre-eminent broadside balladress of the Manchester region, has composed a ballad in response to Sally Gilford’s research as part of the Who's That Girl? commission. Her vocals have been captured and translated into print designs using code and generative code with <Thread{ } collective of which Sally is one third and who also form part of Salford Makers.
The collective have processed Jennifer’s vocals with software called Ableton Live, then have visualised them by exploring video synthesis and data visualisation through changes in frequency, attack and timbre. These visuals were then re-created using hand screen printed processes and turned into digital print designs.
Who's That Girl? Ballad
Tune of: The Rosemary
When you walk by the cut please think of the girls
No song celebrates them, no banner unfurls
Attending to family, working butty boats
Working twice as hard for shoddy Tommy notes
The loads 40 tonnes of salt rock or coal
An old working boat and tiller to control
Whether hobbling ahead to open stiff locks
Or having tea ready before six o’clock
In a world where the family are key to the trade
Young girls and women must then turn to the spade
Out the pit they were dragging and drawing the coke
Earning half the wages of a regular bloke
Now the women that dug the coal wore practical clothes
Being fetishized during their times of repose
Arthur Munby’s obsession was rather depraved
He also kept a wife who performed as a slave
Elizabeth Gunning she broke the Duke’s heart
Her flower shows and parties were a set apart
Under the guise of a decent pastime
These women were bladdered before dinnertime
If some fluff from your shift in the mill does take flight
Take care when you’re crossing the bridge in daylight
Your class could offend a most affluent bore
And your friends walk to work will be longer for sure
But if he had tried that on the towpath I know
The boatwomen will have told him just where to go
Their well-worn in clogs were much to be feared
With clog-toe pie on the menu anytime of the year
When you walk by the cut please think of the girls
No song celebrates them, no banner unfurls
Attending to family, working butty boats
Working twice as hard for shoddy Tommy notes
Jennifer Reid
Jennifer Reid Jennifer Reid is a performer of 19thC Industrial Revolution broadside ballads and Lancashire dialect work song. After volunteering at Chetham's Library and the Working Class Movement Library, Jennifer completed an Advanced Diploma in Local History at Oxford University. Jennifer has tramped the Leeds and Liverpool canal towpath over 12 days; taught Shape Note and mill songs to locals of Brierfield and Nelson; introduced school children the county over to the cultural traditions of Lancashire in the 19thC and sang at Glastonbury festival with reggae band Edward II. Jennifer's work now takes her to Bangladesh, where she is testing the idea that the Industrial Revolution never stopped, it just moved to Dhaka. Jennifer spoke at the first ethnomusicography conference on the Indian sub-continent about her research into Bangladeshi and Mancunian weaving songs.
JenniferReid.weebly.com / @JenniferBallads
>Thread { } >Thread { } collective are artists Vicky Clarke, Cheryl O’Meara and Sally Gilford. They are a Salford-based collective who create generative artwork that subverts and connects textile heritage using analogue and digital processes. Working with code and human bio data, they produce digital imagery, which is interpreted through print and surface pattern. They are interested in how the self can be represented and documented by exploring the relationship and interactions of the digital and human realm. For this commission, the collective worked with Jennifer Reid to produce a textile design using her vocal data.