Medway Sweeps Festival 2018

The Medway Sweeps Festival returns next month.

2018 Medway Sweeps Festival dates: Saturday, 5 May – Monday, 7 May with the Sweeps Festival Concert Night – Sat, 5 May 2018, 7.30pm, in Rochester.

The modern day Sweeps Festival is a colourful mix of music, dancing and entertainment with more than 60 Morris sides and entertainers celebrating throughout the three-day festival. The festival was revived in 1981 by local businessman Gordon Newton, a keen historian. He decided it was time to bring it back and over the years he has helped develop the festival into what it is today – an extravaganza of traditional Britain.

Photo from Visit Medway website.

Medway’s annual Sweeps Festival recreates the joy and laughter enjoyed by the chimney sweeps from 5 to 7 May; the one time of the year the sweeps could leave the soot behind and have some fun. Their fun included the Jack-in-the-Green ceremony, a seven-foot character that they used to waken at dawn on Blue Bell Hill, Chatham. The Jack-in-the-Green would walk with the chimney sweeps in their parade.

When the Climbing Boys’ Act 1868 made it illegal to employ young boys to carry out the trade, the traditional procession gradually began to fade. The final May celebration was held in the early 1900s.

The Sweeps Festival is special because the centre of Rochester truly opens its arms and embraces the three-day event. You don’t have to know much about Morris dancing to enjoy the festival because it has more than enough atmosphere to go round.

Not to be missed is the Sweeps Concert Edward II on Saturday, 5 May.

Edward II, the English roots band that uniquely blend the rhythms of the Caribbean with traditional songs from the British Isles. Temporarily turning away from the rural songs of the middle England Morris teams, this time around the band has been delving deep into a repertoire of songs born of the industrial revolution, specifically of their home town, Manchester. Still upbeat, and with rock-steady rhythms, blazing horns, fabulous harmonies and fiery melodeon melodies, this will be a new set mixed with some of the old favourites and a familiar sound for the faithful.

The new repertoire features such unlikely classics as ‘Victoria Bridge on a Saturday Night’ and ‘A New Song on the Great Demonstration, which is to be made on Kersal Moor September 24th, 1838’, and give remarkable insights into the lives of our those living through a time of great change almost 200 years ago. Not surprisingly, many of the themes are still relevant today with songs of love, loss, poverty and political rights featuring heavily, but in the hands of Edward II, these have been turned into an uplifting celebration of the working people who really forged Manchester and transformed Britain into an Industrial powerhouse.

The songs have been completely reworked into modern roots reggae classics, featuring Glen Latouche’s seductively honeyed lead vocals at the fore and a rock solid rhythm section led by T Carthy providing the irresistible force at the rear. Of course, the band still roam free across the musical spectrum, bringing in dashes of jazz and soul alongside the reggae and folk, but always with an air of good humour and, more than anything, a desire to make you dance.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW! Book online at www.medwayticketslive.co.uk or phone the Box Office on 01634 338338.

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