The Ballads of Child Migration: Songs for Britain's Child Migrants

There's an impressive list of musicians here; the songwriters include Jez Lowe, Julie Matthews & Chris While, Boo Hewerdine, John McCusker and John Doyle. And there are turns from O’Hooley & Tidow, Mike McGoldrick, Andy Cutting and others. I was hoping to hear traditional songs of the child migrant experience but apparently there are none – although O’Hooley & Tidow's ‘Why Did I Leave Thee?’ draws on the words of Frederick Hudson, who was shipped to the colonies as cheap child labour in the name of philanthropy. He returned after a year in 1864, one of the lucky ones who escaped drudgery and terrible dislocation.

Shipping off kids continued, shockingly, right up to 1970, and the liner notes provide a solid introduction and context. But, well-made as they are, some songs fall short. Opener ‘Small Cases Full of Big Dreams’ weighs more towards sentiment than destiny; the title alone reads a bit like a Hallmark card. Others feel over-literal, too clearly commissioned from without rather than created from an inner emotional core. John Doyle's ‘Liberty's Sweet Shore’ takes a widescreen view that the ballad form provides, but the best is McCusker's instrumental, ‘Leaving All We Know’, which gets to the interior experience of forced exile in greater depth than any of the album's lyricists.