- Welcome -

The Cabinet of Souls is an archive of songs about the ordinary people (or if it were Anglo-Saxon the ‘folc’) of Tyneside. The songs span across time from the 16th century, when the Border Reivers terrorised the countryside, to the new post-industrial age in which the old working class culture is dying out, consumerism runs rampant and the world is in peril from global warming.

Songs have always been a wonderful way for ordinary people to express themselves. Since they are based on an oral culture, they are accessible to all, whether literate or illiterate, powerful or powerless. The music which accompanies the words is capable, more than any other art form, of entering equally the hearts and minds of all. So it is that songs through the centuries have been used to instil pride through the derring-do of local heroes; they have spread the word about important social and political events; they have provoked protest, encouraged comradeship and a sense of identity; they have satirised; they have evoked great emotions about love, loss and death. Above all they have entertained.

Doctor Socrates have been playing and performing across the region for over twenty years and we have offered up our back-catalogue of ‘folk rock’ to the Cabinet of Souls as a way for people to connect with the history of Newcastle and its rich musical culture. As a band we recognise we’re incredibly fortunate in following a great tradition of Tyneside songwriters such as Tommy Armstrong, Geordie Ridley, Joe Wilson, Alan Hull, Ed Pickford and Johnny Handle. These songwriters have played a huge part in shaping the sense of identity that many Geordies share and it is surely no accident that Newcastle United Football Club have a local folk song – The Blaydon Races – as their anthem.

As well as our own recordings, we’ve added material from the publication ‘Wor Geordie Top Ten’ – songs chosen, researched and recorded as part of a community project run in schools in West Walker; a project that Doctor Socrates band member Phil Kitchen was involved with.

- Contribute -

If you have recordings of songs from Tyneside that you’d like to contribute to the Cabinet of Souls, we’d love to hear from you! There are no financial incentives to contributing and no music is for sale through this website. Our only aim is that this archive provides as full a reflection of Tyneside’s musical heritage as possible.

So, if you have any songs to offer up to the Cabinet of Souls, please get in touch via our contact page.