On a late afternoon at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton last weekend, the veteran Cape Breton blues and rock musician Matt Minglewood brought the crowd to its feet more than once.

He did it predictably enough with a soulful rendition of Rita MacNeil's well-known Workingman, which he introduced as the blues for the Cape Breton coal miner.

But before that, he also brought people to their feet with a searing new song that has the makings of an equally powerful anthem for the working Canadian soldier on the ground in Kandahar.

The 60-year-old Minglewood, with more than a dozen albums behind him and a load of honours to boot, introduced the new song cautiously, as a tribute he wrote as a result of his experience playing for Canadian troops in a similar big tent in Afghanistan.

As he tore through the song in trademark style, tough and wild but never out of control, there were shouts of recognition from the audience. In the song there was respect and there was humour, and in the refrain there was also an undercurrent of ambivalence that acknowledged the dirt and dust and danger of the soldiers' mission: "Keep your head down, You're in Kandahar."

He did not have to spell out much more in a community where hundreds of families have been directly affected by the deployment and a region that has absorbed more than a fair share of the death and injury.

Yet, this was not a song for or against the Afghanistan mission. In the context of his performance, as was the case for Rita MacNeil's classic, it was a song of solidarity for the work force in a hazardous occupation where workers have little or no say over the purposes or conditions of their work.

In his own way, Minglewood has, over the years, been a kind of folk performer for his far-flung generation of Maritimers and their children, who have been as likely to be found in the Canadian Forces as in the oil sands of Alberta. As in the old folk tradition, his appeal has always drawn on his ability to share identity and experience between performer and audience.

For a few minutes in that tent in a parking lot behind city hall, Minglewood's performance was one of the unexpected highlights of the annual music festival in downtown Fredericton. In front of an audience that was moved to tears as well as cheers, Minglewood was keeping the tradition alive.

The song is unreleased, but the first verses of Kandahar (Keep Your Head Down) can be heard at the Minglewood website, www.mattminglewood.com.

David Frank teaches Canadian history at the University of New Brunwick.