Show Of Hands - Bristol Slaver 2020

On 3rd July, some 23 years after the original song appeared on their 1997 album ‘Dark Fields’, Show of Hands unveil a stunning new production of the Knightley-penned track ‘Bristol Slaver’. The track has been updated in recognition of the recent Black Lives Matter protests where the statue of prominent Bristol slave trader Edward Colston was toppled and thrown into the harbour.

Knightley, who has a degree in Politics and History says: “I wrote the song after watching a BBC ‘Special' from Bristol Docks that somehow managed to avoid the word ‘slavery’ throughout”.

The three way trade operated from the late 16th to the early 19th century carrying slaves, cash crops and manufactured goods between Europe, West Africa and the Caribbean and American colonies. The succinct lyrics of the song tell the story of a Bristol slave trader “To my house in Clifton/I bring capital from pain/Trinkets to AfricaSlaves to Jamaica/Rum and tobacco back again and again”.

The song also references the post war Windrush generation. Invited to Britain from the Caribbean colonies many settled in the St Paul’s area of Bristol in the late Forties and Fifties.

The song highlights an often overlooked shadow in the history of the city. Topical and pertinent, moving and menacing, the brooding production is accompanied by this powerful new video, created by leading graphic design studio Stylorouge

The track is produced by Rolling Stones keyboard player and long-term Show of Hands collaborator Matt Clifford.

www.showofhands.co.uk

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