Raise Your Banners 2009

James 'Bar' Bowen Announced As Winner

On Thursday 5th November 2009, James Bar Bowen won the Raise Your Banners Festival of Political Song songwriting competition. The festival, which has been held every two years since the mid-1990s, took place this year in Bradford, and the songwriting competition was themed "Living in Yorkshire in 2009".

A strong field of entries was received for the competition and the final was held at the Topic Folk Club ("the oldest folk club in the world"). Four finalists performed their songs live at the club and the winning song, based primarily on lyrical content, was declared by a panel of judges.

The winner, Huddersfield-based James Bar Bowen, presented a song called "Never Never Land", which he describes as "a mix of Orwell's concept of doublethink, along with consumerism, product-branding, media manipulation and a dose of surrealism". His observation that brands used to be things that owners and farmers seared into the skin of slaves and cattle, but that now they are labels that people aspire to marking themselves with caused a shocked intake of breath from the audience, and nicely set the tone for the song, with its clever observations and sometimes surprising one-liners.

The judges commended "Never Never Land" for its musical originality and narrative coherence as well as complementing James Bar Bowen on his professional performance and presentation. They said it was very much a song for our times and matched the ethos of the Raise Your Banners festival in addressing complex political issues; the chair of the judges said he thought it was a song that deserved to be heard widely and sung by many and varied voices. Similarly, it was extremely well received by the folk club audience, its insistent skabeat, catchy tune and resolving chorus providing an elegant backdrop to a powerful and complex lyric

The winning prize was an opportunity to perform the song on the main stage of the festival during a concert on the Saturday (7th November) featuring folk luminaries Leon Rosselson, Roy Bailey, Frankie Armstrong, Sandra Kerr, Martin Carthy and Janet Russell, as well as contributions by a number of community and socialist choirs. At this event, the song was extremely well received by the packed audience of 600. It is hoped that the recognition of this new political songwriting talent will be picked up elsewhere in the media and beyond.

Jacqueline Rose