Shovel Dance Collective

Nine-piece folk collective Shovel Dance Collective perform traditional music reworked with improvisation, field recordings and tape manipulation.

Shovel Dance Collective is a nine-member group united by a passion for the beauty, force and political charge of traditional music. Their live practice weaves traditional material into a patchwork embroidered with group improvisations, field recordings and concrète-style tape manipulation. Their arrangements highlight the inviting, hopeful and human qualities of folk, balancing dense orchestration with intense fragility and reflecting the voices of the oppressed and of working people carried in traditional song.