U.K. Folk Bands Use Centuries-Old Ditties to Discuss Prison Abolition, Trans Rights and the Gig Economy

Think of English folk music and maybe thoughts come to mind of villagers lamenting lost loves or sailors bellowing tales of adventure at sea.

But when the rising British folk band Shovel Dance Collective performs, its members want their listeners to think of more contemporary concerns.

At the band’s shows, the singer Mataio Austin Dean sometimes introduces “The Merry Golden Tree,” a song about a badly treated cabin boy, as a tale of “being shafted by your boss” — a scenario many office workers might relate to.

The group also performs “I Wish There Was No Prisons” and “A Hundred Stretches Hence”: probable 19th-century ditties that Alex McKenzie, who plays accordion and flute in the group, said could be thought of as pleas for prison abolition.

Many folk songs “ring very true” today, McKenzie said: “There’s a very easy thread you can draw between what ordinary people were concerned about 100, 200 years ago, or whatever, and what we’re concerned with now.”