Threehundredsongs is just home from work, having had a magical evening watching the magnificent Chris Wood.

This song is the tale of the brutal, cold-blooded murder of an innocent man, Mr. Jean Charles de Menezes. Murdered by those we trust to keep us all safe.

Just a Brazilian electrician
…
Hollow point was the ammunition

Jean Charles de Menezes died, aged just 27, on the 22nd of July, 2005. Cause of death: multiple gunshots to the head, in broad daylight, in front of hundreds of humans.

Threehundredsongs lived just three minutes from Jean Charles’ flat at the time. The number of occasions that we would have boarded the exact same bus; the exact same tube; experienced the same disappointment of pitching up at Brixton underground, only to find it closed. For security reasons! The irony! It could have been any of us, but

It was a gorgeous summer’s morning,
It was a gorgeous summer’s day
His cotton jacket was all he carried
As he walked out to face the day

The line about the jacket is apposite: the guy was not a security threat. Yet he was summarily executed, without trial, in a country that supposedly does not have the death penalty.

After the show I talked with Chris, himself concerned that he hadn’t played enough folk music for our little folk night. But we asked and talked and thought: what is folk music? Simply because the events happened in our lifetime, does that mean it isn’t folk?

No, it really does not.

Hopefully 200 or more years in the future people will still sing this song, paying tribute to an innocent man, murdered by the forces that are supposedly there to protect the innocent.

Artist:	Chris Wood
Album:	Handmade Life
Writer:	Chris Wood
Producer:	Unknown. See credits.
Released:	2010; R.U.F. Records