Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest – Volume 2

1. Steel Workers Lament – Jordan Musycsyn
2. Miner’s Wife – Breagh MacKinnon
3. Cape Breton Miner and BESCO – Mike Lelievre
4. Daughters Awake – The Yarnell’s
5. The Voice of the Worker – Richard MacKinnon
6. Friday Evening – Ian MacDougall
7. An Seann Tigh Sgoil (The Old School House) – Chris McDonald
8. A Cape Breton Lament – Hugh MacDonald
9. Steel Winds – Tom Mills
10. Stronger than Steel – Keith Mullins
11. Sydney Steel – John Campbelljohn
12. The Wearing of the Red – Leo Feinstein
13. Whatever It Takes – Ken Chisholm
14. Arise Ye Nova Scotia Slaves – Nipper MacLeod
15. Michael’s Tune – Jerome AuCoin
16. Stand on the Gaff – Ernest Laidlaw
17. Blackheart’s of the Company – Norma MacDonald
18. Quaint Harbour – Yvette Rogers
19. Trampin’ Down the Highway – Angelo Spinazollo
20. Doscomocracy – Alicia Penney
21. The Ballad of Slim McInnis – Kev Corbett

BUY CD

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.