大象传媒

A Thankful or 鈥楤lessed鈥� village is a place where every soldier returned alive from World War One. Songwriter Darren Hayman heard about 鈥楾hankful Villages鈥� and knew that he had his next album title. He then embarked on a three year odyssey to visit all 54 of them..

Hayman writes a song for every village based on local characters, hidden stories and chance meetings. He records soundscapes in graveyards, playgrounds, churches, road sides and village fetes, uses playground xylophones, and old church organs.

Some songs take the form of instrumentals inspired by location, some are interviews with village residents set to music, others are new songs with lyrics or found local traditional songs.

The first Thankful Villages were identified and named by Arthur Mee in 1936 in his series of guidebooks, The King鈥檚 England.

鈥淭hankful Villages is such a beautiful and strange title, I knew what I had to do. I had to visit every one of Britain鈥檚 54 Thankful Villages,鈥� says Hayman. 鈥淚t was not going to be a project about war. Arthur Mee鈥檚 definition was really just a starting point; a random device to point me to small places. That鈥檚 what I love and that鈥檚 the one certainty I had about Thankful Villages, that it would be about small things, small things that matter.鈥�

Producer: Thom Hoffman
A Greenpoint production for 大象传媒 Radio 4