In what passed for justice between 1450 and 1750, up to 60,000 people judged to be witches were executed throughout European countries and colonies.
The overwhelming majority were female. Burning these poor women to death was common practice in Europe. It was different in America where victims of the infamous Salem witch-hunts were hanged if they hadn’t already succumbed to ghastly disease-ridden prison conditions.
What has all this to do with Salut! Folk?
Rather a lot. Katherine Priddy’s Matches, eloquently confronting those three centuries of miscarriages of justice, is our latest Song of the Day.
It is, as my headline asserts, a red hot cauldron of emotions, Priddy’s deceptively gentle build-up in the verses rising to the controlled anger of a dramatic chorus introduced by a pounding drumbeat:
They weren’t burning witches, it was women on those fires
It is a sensational piece of music, as powerful and, for all the bleakness subject, as beautiful as anything I’ve heard in of any genre for a long time.
And of course Priddy’s compelling lyrics reach beyond the plight of supposed sorcerers to embrace the struggles of womanhood more generally.
This is how she describes the song, out as a single taken from a forthcoming new album, These Frightening Machines, due for release on March 6:
“Inspired by a rabbit hole I went down about the language we use when referencing the witch hunts and the witch trials, which still tends to focus on the burning of ‘witches’.
Really, it wasn’t witches they were hunting down and accusing and killing, it was women (in the majority of cases), killed for all sorts of reasons and false accusations. This sparked the song, which is meant to shed light on all those things women have been and still are – how we’re idolised and vilified for them by turn, silenced, overlooked and judged.”
Rabbits? By chance, my car player’s shuffle mode brought as the next track the 1960s Jefferson Airplane classic White Rabbit. Priddy’s tour de force is of comparable quality and strength, and greater substance.
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Images: https://www.katherinepriddy.co.uk
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