This spring sees The Askew Sisters launch their bold and long-awaited new album ‘Enclosure’. Emily and Hazel have become known as two of the foremost performers and interpreters of English folk music. Together they rework and reinterpret songs and balladry to creating breath-taking arrangements, which allow words that are hundreds of years old to resonate profoundly with contemporary audiences. ‘Enclosure’ is inspired by the land enclosure movements as well as wider themes of freedom, captivity and disconnection from the natural world. Five years since their last album, the arrangements and production on ‘Enclosure’ take a new direction for the duo, but the album is still unmistakably the Askew Sisters, featuring gritty cello alongside sweeping fiddles and melodeon, and Hazel’s captivating vocals. The album will be officially launched on May 3rd and the sisters will be on tour across throughout March – May to celebrate, including an official launch at Cecil Sharp House in London on 24th April.
Oh, waly, waly up the bank and waly, waly down the brae, And waly, waly up burnside where I and my love used to go. I was a lady of high renown that lived in the North country; I was a lady of high renown when Jamie Douglas courted me.
And when we came to Glasgow town, it was a comely sight to see, My lord was clad in the velvet green and I myself in cramasie. And when my eldest son was born and set upon his nurse’s knee, I was the happiest woman born and my good lord, he loved me.
There came a man into our house and Jamie Lockhart was his name And it was told unto my lord that I did lie in bed with him. There came another to our house and he was no good friend to me; He put Jamie’s shoes beneath my bed and bade my good lord come and see.
Oh woe be unto thee, Blackwood, and an ill death may you die, You were the first and the foremost man that parted my good lord and I. And when my lord came to my room this great falsehood for to see, He turned him round all with a scowl and not one word would he speak to me.
“Come up, come up, now Jamie Douglas, come up the stair and dine with me, I’ll set you on a chair of gold and court you kindly on my knee.” “When cockleshells turn silver bells and fishes fly from tree to tree, When frost and snow turn fire to burn it’s I’ll come up and dine with thee.”
Oh woe be unto thee, Blackwood, and an ill death may you die, You were the first and the foremost man that parted my good lord and I. And when my father he had word my good lord had forsaken me, He sent fifty of his brisk dragoons to fetch me home to my own country.
O had I wist when first I kissed that love should been so ill to win, I’d locked my heart in a cage of gold and pinned it with a silver pin. You think that I am like yourself and lie with each one that I see, But I do swear by Heavens high, I never loved a man but thee.
‘Tis not the frost that freezes fell, nor blowing snow’s inclemency, ‘Tis not such cold that makes me cry, but my love’s heart grown cold to me. O waly, waly, love is bonnie a little while when first it’s new, But love grows old and waxes cold and fades away like morning dew.
In 2019, British and Irish folk music is more exciting and urgent than it’s been for years. Much of it sounds powerfully raw and immediate, with many groups recognising the politics of our times in their songs, and incorporating contemporary stories within more ancient musical motifs. Here are bands confronting the legacies of abortion rights; the oppression of women, homosexuals and other minority communities; the loss of minority language; the refugee crisis; and stories of people who have stood up to hate. They’re not doing so in browbeating, bluntly obvious ways either. Some are uncovering small but powerful stories of overlooked people, whose achievements we can learn from. Others are creating more oblique and moving work, highlighting the injustices that linger in our society.
Many younger makers of modern folk grew up during the turn-of-the-century indie-folk revival, where taboos surrounding less popular singing styles and traditional songs started to disappear. A steady flow of reissues by the likes of Bert Jansch, Shirley Collins and Lal and Mike Waterson has since revealed how much of our country’s folk culture had been neglected.
We could call this explosion “woke” folk – though there’s much more to this disparate collection of acts than a slogan. Some have an experimental edge, incorporating influences from other genres such as krautrock. Some are more accessible and rousing, but all of the British and Irish artists that follow here share a common musical sensibility: they sing in recognisable voices, without varnish and sheen, delivering messages straight and sure about who we were, and who we are now.
Grace Petrie
Leicester-based singer-songwriter and activist who found her calling as a political folk musician after the 2010 general election
It’s rare that an interview can vindicate the wishes of an artist. Rare, but possible. In 2016, the self-proclaimed “radically feminist and radically leftwing” musician Grace Petrie released the song, I Wish the Guardian Believed That I Exist, in response to an article in the paper lamenting the current lack of protest singers in folk music.
In fact, by that point the Leicester-based singer-songwriter had been making politically charged protest music for six years, since the release of her breakthrough single Farewell to Welfare. In that fierce, guitar-driven number, Petrie found a new calling as a political folk musician, spurred by the 2010 general election and the Tories’ subsequent coming to power, propped up by the Liberal Democrats. “It was when the government changed in 2010 that I started thinking a lot more about austerity and there seemed to be much more to protest about,” says the 31-year-old, when I speak to her over the phone from Leicester. “It hit closer to home how things would change, to impact my life and those of the people I knew. Nine years on and this regime of austerity has left Britain unrecognisable.”
Before the explicit political references began appearing, though, Petrie describes the music she used to make as “abstractly political”. “When I was a teenager I was writing what I saw as pop songs – songs about my love life, because that’s what pop songs are about – but my love life concerned girls, since I wasn’t in love with boys,” she says. “I never saw that as a political act initially, but now I see it as a really political thing; the visibility of queer musicians and centring that in lyrics.”
This visibility still sits on the fringes of the music industry. Having self-funded her first eight albums, she released last year’s Queer As Folk through crowdfunding, still eluding major-label interest. “My career has been completely outside the mainstream and I’ve never known it to be any different,” Petrie says. Even the folk traditionalists were proving hard to win over. “The content of folk songwriting at the moment can be amazingly radical,” she continues, “but I’m not sure the audiences are with them all the time. You have your very wealthy, white, Telegraph-reading folk-club regulars who are happy to hear a song about the peasants’ revolt, but if you talk about food banks in their town, that’s seen as really uncouth. You notice this awkward shuffle go across the room.”
