Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Tori Freestone Trio
In the Chop House
(Whirlwind WR 4648)
TORI FREESTONE is a young south London saxophonist who blows a very singular horn. When I spoke with her at last November’s London Jazz Festival she told me that the music that she plays has a direct line to her forebears, who were east London watermen and boatspeople’s families.
People who crossed over and came south of the river “at about the same time that the Greenwich foot tunnel was built” (it was opened in 1902).
She remembers how important folk music, particularly shanties and the work songs of the river workers, were to her family and how she would sing and play violin with them when she was a young girl. And it is as if that sound has never left her, passing into her own musical blood.
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