Martin Green’s new drama Keli explores raw trauma, creative resilience and working-class legacy through a young woman’s life in a former mining town
Martin Green knows exactly what’s coming. “My mates who make music for TV are already feeling it,” says the musician and theatre maker, pondering the might of what lies around the artificial intelligence corner.
“It might still sound a bit rubbish just now but AI is already being used to do their job. And it’s only going to get better at it.” Digitally-driven career obsolescence might not seem the most obvious parallel to be drawing with a folk musician and a story about colliery brass bands but dig a little deeper – pun fully intended – and the parallels are a rich seam.
Green, founder member of one third of Scottish experimental folk band Lau, is the creative force behind the story connecting historic pit closures in coal mining communities across Scotland to the now of generational trauma handed down to those born long after the days of Maggie Thatcher and Arthur Scargill, amid a world where few jobs are untouched by the digital rampage.
As writer on the National Theatre of Scotland production Keli, Green has created a world in which a young woman in a fictional former coal mining town learns from experience about legacy, heritage, tradition and strength in community. And the significance of brass.
“It’s a story about a young woman from the Central Belt who is a prodigiously talented brass player,” says Green, whose large-scale 2018 soundscape project Aeons, depicting the history of the Tyne in Newcastle, landed him an Ivor Novello in 2018. “But she has a number of obstacles in her life, not least one day she falls down a mine shaft and meets a 135-year-old miner who was the last great tenor horn player in the same brass band as she’s in.”
The clash of timelines leads to a cross-generational examination of the Labour movement, trade unionism and industrial action, and what remains when industry dries up. In the case of the mining towns it’s music. “The bands are still so strong, which is amazing but surprising because the catalyst that spawned them has been dead for a long time,” says Green.
She says: “I’m from Glasgow, so in terms of industry it would be the shipyards that I feel an understanding of. I wasn’t there and I don’t feel an instinctive connection to it but the older people in my life have given me that.
“Keli’s life is a pressure cooker. She’s a lot on her plate and a lot of it is to do with her being pulled between what she wants to do and how she wants to express herself as a young person, and the external factors she feels obliged to deal with. As she learns more about the people around her she connects more to what and where she is from.
“Keli isn’t consciously political but she is inherently political. It’s a story about young working class people in general, those set expectations of them as workhorses, that they’ll just keep running like a machine. The reality is they are young and they are vulnerable.”
For Green one of the most important aspects of Keli’s story is the depiction of the human need for creative connection away from the ravages of the workplace. “There is a reason why people choose to get together and make something collectively without it being their job,” he says. “Coming from a folk music background, that resonates strongly – it’s after-work music that people chose to make for themselves rather than for prestige or financial gain.
“It’s true of lawn bowls, Sunday league football, whatever – any of those things that allow people to do something together. That’s all a release of the tensions of everyday life. Those tensions might have changed since the days of the coal mines in this country but they haven’t decreased.
“Where once the pressure was manual work, the pressures are different now. When I went into rooms with brass bands in these places, the people there were plumbers, police, teachers and accountants. The need for them to come together hasn’t decreased at all. If anything, it has increased. All of our jobs have become a little bit more lonely. Even mine is more solitary than it used to be. I don’t even have to leave my front room to go to meetings.”
The British mining community has been rich territory for emotional storytelling, from Our Friends In The North and Billy Elliott to Brassed Off and The Full Monty, each depicting the importance of cultural engagement and creative roots as deep as the mine shafts. Each performance of Keli features live music from Kingdom Brass and Whitburn Band.
Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow is musical director and appears onstage performing The Eyes of Others from the show’s soundtrack. The music reveals not only the realities of life in pit towns but the residual strength of their echo. Green says: “ I remember the strike, just about. But I’ve been more interested in what that all means for people in these places now and I think that’s what will resonate today.
“It’s also good to remember the mines were nationalised after the war. The government bought these huge privately-owned resources. It would be like the state buying Amazon. It has happened in the last 100 years and that’s not a bad thing to remember.”
As a Glaswegian, Black has been moved not only by the music of the mines, but also by Green’s insights into the nuances of Scottish working class domesticity. “The music is sensational, really moving and exciting,” she says. “But a lot of the stuff that goes on with Keli is unrelated specifically to mining communities, especially around the relationship between Keli and her mum.
“To be honest, I’m amazed an English man could write such a well-rounded relationship between a Scottish mother and daughter. It will really resonate. I love Keli. She’s so human, funny and I think everybody else will love her too. There’s a lot there to like.”
Keli is at Perth Theatre June 4-7, and Tramway Glasgow June 11-14. Green’s album Split The Air and Abbott’s single The Eyes of Others are out now.
