Martin Carthy MBE is an English folk singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in British traditional music, inspiring contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, and later artists such as Richard Thompson, since he emerged as a young musician in the early days of the folk revival.
The Long Sword dance is a hilt-and-point sword dance recorded mainly in Yorkshire, England. The dances are usually performed around Christmas time and were believed to derive from a rite performed to enable a fruitful harvest.
Eliza Carthy, MBE is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing the fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians singer/guitarist Martin Carthy and singer Norma Waterson.
The Watersons were an English folk group from Hull, Yorkshire. They performed mainly traditional songs with little or no accompaniment. Their distinctive sound came from their closely woven harmonies.
Towersey Festival is an annual festival of folk, world music and traditional dance, previously held in the village of Towersey, now relocated to neighbouring Thame in Oxfordshire, England. It has taken place every August bank holiday weekend since its founding in 1965.
The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards celebrate outstanding achievement during the previous year within the field of folk music, with the aim of raising the profile of folk and acoustic music. The awards have been given annually since 2000 by British radio station BBC Radio 2.
Waterson:Carthy were an English folk group originally comprising Norma Waterson on vocals, her husband Martin Carthy on guitar and vocals and their daughter Eliza Carthy on fiddle and vocals.
Norma Christine Waterson is an English musician, best known as one of the original members of The Watersons, a celebrated English traditional group. Other members of the group included her brother Mike Waterson and sister Lal Waterson, a cousin John Harrison, and in later incarnations of the group her husband Martin Carthy.
John Michael Kirkpatrick is an English player of free reed instruments.
Kate St John is a composer, arranger, producer and instrumentalist. She was born in London in 1957 and was classically trained on oboe. She gained a music degree at City University London. Her first band was The Ravishing Beauties with Virginia Astley and Nicky Holland. The trio joined The Teardrop Explodes in Liverpool during the winter of 1981 for a series of dates at a small clubs and a UK tour in early 1982. During the 1980s and early 1990s she was a member of The Dream Academy with Nick Laird-Clowes and Gilbert Gabriel. In 1985 they had a worldwide hit with "Life In A Northern Town" and produced three albums: The Dream Academy (1985), Remembrance Days (1987) and A Different Kind Of Weather (1990). In the 1990s St. John was a member of Van Morrison's live band playing oboe and saxophone. She played on 5 Van Morrison albums. In 1994 she co-wrote and sang on 4 tracks with Roger Eno on the album The Familiar on the All Saints Label. This led to the formation of Channel Light Vessel, a band with Kate, Roger Eno, Bill Nelson, Laraaji and Mayumi Tachibana. St John has released two solo albums: Indescribable Night (1995) and Second Sight (1997).
Brass Monkey are an English folk band from the 1980s, who reunited in the late 1990s. They were innovative in their use of a brass section which was atypical for English folk music.
There has been a folk festival in the coastal town of Sidmouth in South West England in the first week of August every year since 1955, attracting tens of thousands of visitors to over 700 diverse events.
The English Folk Dance and Song Society is an organisation that promotes English folk music and folk dance. EFDSS was formed in 1932 when two organisations merged: the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society. The EFDSS, a member-based organisation, was incorporated in 1935 and became a registered charity in 1963.
Blue Murder is an occasional English folk supergroup, consisting at various times of various members of Swan Arcade, Coope Boyes and Simpson, Waterson–Carthy and The Watersons.
Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man is an album by Waterson–Carthy.
Maria Gilhooley, who records under the name Marry Waterson, is a singer, songwriter and visual artist. A member of the Waterson-Knight-Carthy family musical dynasty, Waterson is described as having "thrived on communal music making while developing highly original and distinctly English performance styles of [her] own."
Saul Rose is an English folk melodeon player and singer.
Nancy Kerr is an English folk musician and songwriter, specialising in the fiddle and singing. Born in London, she now lives in Sheffield. Kerr is a Principal Lecturer in Folk Music at Leeds Conservatoire and Newcastle University. She is the daughter of London-born singer-songwriter Sandra Kerr and Northumbrian piper Ron Elliott. She was the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Folk Singer of the Year".
Songs of Separation was a music project created in the aftermath of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum to explore through the medium of music ideas of separation. It was organised by double-bass player Jenny Hill and brought together ten female folk musicians from Scotland and England for one week in June 2015 on the Isle of Eigg. The resulting album won the "Best Album" category in the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
The Goathland Plough Stots are a team of Long Sword Dancers based in the village of Goathland, North Yorkshire, England. The traditional dance that they perform, died out by the start of the twentieth century, but was revived in 1922. The team were expelled from the Morris Ring for allowing women to be trained up in the art of the dance, the tradition being that it is a male-only dance. The Goathland Plough Stots dance is recognised as one of the oldest in England, with a history dating back over a thousand years.
