Folk Singers
Folk Singers
Historically, any person singing the popular songs of their communities for their own or others benefit was a folk singer, though it has now come to represent a more ‘commercial’ or genre-defining grouping.
There are now many established professional performers whose repertoire is classified as ‘English Folk Song’, and this has grown from a small group of singers in the 1950s, who set out to explore and develop a particularly ‘British’ sense of tradition, led by people like Ewan MacColl and A.L.Lloyd. They were in turn heavily influenced by American folk song and the work of people like Alan Lomax.
This was characterised as a folk song ‘revival’ and many revival singers have become very well respected performers and experts on traditional songs. These new singers in turn explored and collected songs form those people still singing songs that had been handed down through families and communities aurally.
These days, traditional and modern ‘folk songs’ are found together in repertoires and festivals of Folk Music throughout England.
Photo: Folk singer medley
Top: Fay Hield, Shirley Collins
Middle: Martin Carthy
Bottom: Peter Bellamy, Kate Rusby
