Shovel Dance Collective

Shovel Dance Collective is a group of nine musicians united by a passion for the beauty, power and political significance of traditional music from Great Britain, Ireland and elsewhere. They view folk music not as an archaeological artefact to be unearthed, but as a living, inviting and generous community activity for those it is intended for. They create a kind of mud music, both traditional and experimental, engaging in a profound, trans-temporal synthesis of free improvisation and field recordings. Their music emerges as a patchwork of pieces sewn together, rearranged and recontextualised. The thread is woven with their sense of aesthetic innovation and a deep understanding of how traditional music contains the voices of the oppressed and those who, through their work, create the wealth of the world.

They have performed to sold-out audiences throughout the United Kingdom, with headline concerts at venues such as Cafe OTO, Kings Place and Cecil Sharp House. The collective has participated in many major festivals: Glastonbury, Roskilde, SXSW, Rewire, Green Man, End of the Road, Sidmouth Folk Festival, Supernormal and Supersonic, etc. Publications such as The Wire, Loud and Quiet, NME, Financial Times and The Times have praised their stage performances over the years. Their albums ‘The Shovel Dance’ and ‘The Water is the Shovel of the Shore’ have been praised by The Wire, MOJO, Uncut, KLOF, Songlines and others, and both were named albums of the year by The Quietus.

Their second album, ‘The Shovel Dance’, was released in October 2024 on American Dreams Records.