Brit Folk

The Watersons, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Kate Rusby, Jake Bugg, The Unthanks

June Tabor: ‘Will I ever write a song? I would say the answer is no’

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June Tabor’s dark, distinctive singing has featured on dozens of records over the past 40-odd years, ranging from raw folk songs in the style of Anne Briggs to high-fidelity jazz and folk-rock. Although her performances are often austere and outwardly serious – a veneer enhanced by the somewhat intense photos of her that often grace the covers of her albums – Tabor is quick to laugh and joke in person. Songs about cannibalism and war give way to stories about annoying the dogs with her singing and her favourite vegetarian restaurant […]

Read Full Story: June Tabor: ‘Will I ever write a song? I would say the answer is no’

‘It’s got balls and it can bite’: the woman blowing recorder prejudice away

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She is revolutionising the classroom scourge – blasting raw experimental music through it, sometimes playing two at once. Meet recorder powerhouse Laura Cannell

The recorder does not enjoy a good reputation. In the popular imagination, it’s somewhere above the kazoo but below the harmonica– an instrument that brings back schoolroom memories of painful, atonal versions of Frère Jacques, with spit dripping on to floors. And that’s why Laura Cannell lies to her hairdresser about what she does.

“I just say I play the violin,” says the professional recorder player and composer. “It’s horrible if your memory is of a plastic instrument that tastes of disinfectant and sounds awful. Kids’ fingers don’t cover the holes, so it’s bound to sound terrible.”

Yet Cannell is revolutionising the recorder, pushing raw, wind-whipped compositions through it, and sometimes playing two at once in stark medieval harmonies. […]

Read the Full Story: ‘It’s got balls and it can bite’: the woman blowing recorder prejudice away | Music | The Guardian

Vashti Bunyan on Soho, silence and finding her voice

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Fragile.

The word has been used to describe Vashti Bunyan so often over the years you wouldn’t be surprised to find her picture if you looked the word up in a dictionary. It’s been used about her voice – a delicate, slight yet utterly beautiful thing – and it’s been used about the woman, or at least the girl she was. The girl who was once signed up by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. The girl who in 1970 released an album, Just Another Diamond Day, that nobody bought, a failure that crushed her will to make music for decades and saw her disappear in a horse and cart to the wilds of Scotland and Ireland. A fresh peach who was bruised by life. […]

Read the Full Story: Vashti Bunyan on Soho, silence and finding her voice (From HeraldScotland)

An emerging British folk music scene: archive, 15 October 1963 

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The Guardian, 15 October 1963: The modest boomlet is showing every sign of turning into a super colossal folkburger, with plenty of chips on every plate and juice there for the squeezing

There has been a minor folk-song boom for as long as most addicts can remember. Nothing spectacular, nothing bloated, but steady, devoted, sure – a lasting, rippling tide of interest.

It started in the mid-fifties when skiffle’s bubble burst. Skiffle was really a convenient compromise, folksy and portentous enough to engross those repulsed by rock’s simpleton thumps but needing scant talent to bolster its pretensions. Anyone could expel a nasal screech or scrape a washboard but, long ago and far away, Leadbelly first plucked out the tune; and that made it all respectable. […]

 

Full Story at: An emerging British folk music scene: archive, 15 October 1963 | Music | The Guardian