Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest
- The Ballad of Slim McInnis
- Doscomocracy
- Trampin’ Down the Highway
- Quaint Harbour
- Blackheart’s of the Company
- Stand the Gaff
- Michael’s Tune
- Arise Ye Nova Scotia Slaves
- Whatever It Takes
- The Wearing of the Red
- Down at Sydney Steel
- Stronger then Steel
- Steel Winds
- A Cape Breton Lament
- An Seann Tigh Sgoil
- Friday Evening
- The Voice of the Worker
- Daughters Awake
- Cape Breton Miner and Besco
- Miner’s Wife
- Steel Workers Lament
Cape Breton Island Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest
Cape Breton University’s Centre for Cape Breton Studies has collaborated with some of the region’s best musicians to reproduce a second album of songs from the Island’s rich industrial heritage. Cape Breton Island Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest, an initiative by Dr. Richard MacKinnon, will be launched during the East Coast Music Awards week.
This is part two of a program to preserve, promote and make available the steel, mining and protest songs of the region. It tells stories about the struggles to survive strikes and hard times, the courage of workers wives, the fight by trade unionists and the oppression of international company owners.
In 2012, the Centre released the CD “Cape Breton Island Protest Songs, Volume 1” along with an accompanying web site (www.protestsongs.ca).
It was also a collaboration between MacKinnon and Cape Breton musicians to record songs that were originally published in Cape Breton newspapers such as the Maritime Labour Herald, The Steelworker and the Steelworker and Miner from the 1920s through to the 1950s. MacKinnon found the words and the musicians created the arrangements and music.
The new CD includes 21 songs selected from the many collected. Some were written as early as 1910, some from the strike era of the 1920s, and others more recently composed by former steelworkers, coal miners and professional Cape Breton musicians. The accompanying web site has historical and contextual information and includes recorded bonus tracks.