Music can be as simple as a love song. But if you keep digging down through its notes and phrases you’ll find buried secrets, double meanings and encrypted emotions. In the 17th Century, the power of songs to conceal communications and courier clandestine messages was used to spread political propaganda, revealed signs of witchcraft and privately practise banned religions.

Cloak & Dagger sees Van Diemen’s Band time travel to 17th Century England and Scotland – an age of political turmoil, religious upheaval and social revolt. In tightly-buttoned domestic manors, they find popular songs that reinforced societal and gender norms in aid of bolstering the status quo; and in bawdy taverns, hop-soaked protest songs excoriating the ruling classes.

In typical Van Diemen’s Band style, Cloak & Dagger recontextualise 17th Century popular songs for the modern day, including works by two of the century’s most prominent composers and songwriters Henry Purcell and Henry Lawes. Within this centuries-old music Van Diemen’s Band finds relevance to today’s social and political climate.

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