Reg Meuross – Stolen From God – Ashburton Arts Centre – Thursday 9th October

A moving tapestry of history, melody and penitence, Reg Meuross’s folk song‑cycle examines Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade with grace, grit and no shortage of beauty.

A familiar face on the ATB pages, Reg Meuross is well known to us. From his appearances in the Folk Clubs to his recorded work – most recently his Woody Guthrie tribute – the Stolen From God project is one to which he often returns.

A PROFOUND MUSICAL RECKONING

Folk music, in its purest form, tells truths the history books all too often overlook. In Stolen From God tonight at Ashburton Arts Centre, Reg Meuross – resplendent in his navy suit, silver-haired and senatorial – offers a profound, musical reckoning with Britain’s role in the transatlantic trade of enslaved people, with a particular focus on the South West. If that sounds heavy, well, it is. But somehow, this show – equal parts concert, lecture and lament – is also beautiful, melodic, often witty, and never dreary.

Structured as a narrated song cycle, the performance opens with a calmly devastating monologue written by Meuross and delivered (tonight) by historian Lucy MacKeith, who brings professorial poise and quiet authority to her role as narrator. Her voice sets the tone: direct but never didactic, urgent but not overwrought.

We begin in Tavistock, with naval commander John Hawkins – described here as “intrepid”, in quotes dripping with historical irony – who saw the instability of Sierra Leone as an opportunity to snatch profit from suffering. He captured Africans, traded them with the Spanish in the Americas for hides, pearls and molasses. Queen Elizabeth I publicly derided the trade, but nonetheless granted him a coat of arms – bearing the image of a bound slave, if you please. A poisonous legacy indeed: Hawkins also introduced tobacco to England. “Cancer and slavery,” intones MacKeith. What a guy.

RAINDROPS OR TEARS?

The songs emerge like tidepools between these stark historical rocks. Meuross’s guitar and voice are joined by two inspired collaborators: Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, wielding an antique concertina with wiry, bohemian grace, and Suntou Susso, a kora master from The Gambia, charismatic and commanding in a mango-yellow shirt and flag-draped strap. The three form a sublime, subtle trio – melancholy textures buoyed by bright cascades of sound. At times, Susso’s percussive kora playing evokes raindrops – or are they tears?

Musically, the show is a triumph. The 6/8 lilt of The Way Of Cain undercuts its grim subject matter – how to own another man, one must first see him as less than human. Elsewhere, a diversion on Edward Colston, a clear nod to the toppling of the Bristol statue during the Black Lives Matter protests – is a sharply pointed, and darkly catchy number.

FACTS CUT DEEP

But the facts cut deep. We’re reminded, by Mackeith, that slavery was not some colonial periphery – it was integral to the West Country economy. Our wool. Our gunsmiths. And I never knew there was a two-way thing. On one side, unscrupulous British merchants captured the homeless, the idle, and even children, sentencing them to years of starvation and hard labour as indentured servants – a ‘lesser’ but still brutal form of slavery, endured by up to a million souls. On the other, Barbary pirates stalked the Devon and Cornwall coasts, seizing fishermen from their boats and plucking field workers from our rolling hillsides.

Devon, we learn, was neck-deep in it: the wool trade supplied the ships, the gunsmiths made the weapons, Drake and Hawkins fuelled the trade routes. Even sugar – Drake’s “side hustle” – is unmasked here as a bloody indulgence. “Iron and fabrics, men and children, sugar, cotton, molasses,” chants the narrator. The cold logic of the triangular trade laid bare.

MOMENTS OF HUMANITY

Yet moments of humanity persist. A standout song draws on the words of Frederick Douglass, the African American abolitionist who visited Exeter in the 1840s. “Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, the gap is so wide…” It’s powerful to hear those words ring out in Devon soil.

Susso opens the second half with humour and grace, introducing the anatomy of the kora: “pumpkin and mahogany, strung with fishing line.” His presence roots the show in the griot tradition – music as history, memory, witness. He smiles, winks, and the room warms.

This balance is the show’s great achievement: its tone is penitent, yes – but never sanctimonious. There is weight, but also wit. Darkness, but also light. The show leaves me not with a sense of despair, but with reflection. Meuross’s voice, gentle and luminous, weaves a golden thread of hope. Stolen From God is not merely an indictment of the past – its an act of conscious memory, of contemplation through song.

And yes, it’s an entertaining night out. You might even say captivating.

Words – Andy Hill, Photos – Abigail Barton

Reg Meuross online: Website / Facebook / Twitter

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