Martin Dominic Forbes Carthy MBE is an English singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in English folk 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 in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s.
Baaba Maal is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. In addition to acoustic guitar, he also plays percussion. He has released several albums, both for independent and major labels. In July 2003, he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary.
Eliza Amy Forbes Carthy, MBE is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing the fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians Martin Carthy and 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. They have been called the "most famous family in English folk music".
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 was an English singer and songwriter, best known as one of the original members of The Watersons, a celebrated English traditional folk 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.
James David Catto is a British musician, video director, photographer, and script editor. He was a founding member of Faithless, before leaving in 1999 to form 1 Giant Leap.
Rokia Traoré is a Malian-born singer, songwriter and guitarist.
Catrin Ana Finch is a Welsh harpist, arranger and composer. She was the Official Harpist to the Prince of Wales from 2000 to 2004 and is visiting professor at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and the Royal Academy of Music in London. Finch has given recitals at venues throughout the world.
The Village Pump Festival is a folk music festival that takes place near Trowbridge, England. It has its roots 54 years ago in a barn at the Lamb Inn, Trowbridge, and later moved a few miles outside the town to Stowford Manor Farm at Farleigh Hungerford. The music covers a variety of genres from folk and roots to blues, celtic and Ceilidh with a variety of other entertainment including a family field, with puppetry and story telling.
Wrasse Records is a British record label based in Ashtead, Surrey. It was started in 1998 by Ian and Jo Ashbridge. Both had been involved in the music industry prior to them starting up their own company. Its offices are based in the UK, but it distributes its CDs all around the world. In 2005, it licensed most of Universal Music's world music releases for distribution in the United States and the UK.
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.
Jim Causley is an English folk singer, songwriter, and musician from Devon who specializes in the traditional songs and music of the West Country. Journalist Colin Irwin has called him "the finest singer of his generation".
Ian A. Anderson is an English magazine editor, folk musician and broadcaster.
Seckou Keita is a kora player and drummer from Senegal. He is one of the few champions of the lesser-known kora repertoire from Casamance in southern Senegal.
The BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music was an award given to world music artists between 2002 and 2008, sponsored by BBC Radio 3. The award was thought up by fRoots magazine's editor Ian Anderson, inspired by the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Until 2006, the awards panel was chaired by Charlie Gillett and the awards shows co-ordinated by Alex Webb.
African blues is a genre of popular music, primarily from West Africa. The term may also reference a putative journey undertaken by traditional African music from its homeland to the United States and back. Some scholars and ethnomusicologists have speculated that the origins of the blues can be traced to the musical traditions of Africa, as retained by African-Americans during and after slavery. Even though the blues is a key component of American popular music, its rural, African-American origins are largely undocumented, and its stylistic links with African instrumental traditions are somewhat tenuous. One musical influence that can be traced back to African sources is that of the plantation work songs with their call-and-response format, and more especially the relatively free-form field hollers of the later sharecroppers, which seem to have been directly responsible for the characteristic vocal style of the blues.
Bright Phoebus, fully titled Bright Phoebus: Songs by Lal & Mike Waterson, is a folk rock album by Lal and Mike Waterson. It was recorded in May 1972 with musical assistance from various well-known members of the British folk rock scene. The album failed to make an impact on its original release, but it was subsequently championed by many musicians, including Billy Bragg, Arcade Fire, Richard Hawley and Jarvis Cocker. For years the album was difficult to obtain. In 2017, a re-release of Bright Phoebus was announced and shortly thereafter pulled from the market for legal reasons.
Africa Express is a UK-based non-profit organization that facilitates cross-cultural collaborations between musicians in African, Middle Eastern, and Western countries. It seeks to help African musicians break beyond the perceived stigmas and prejudices of the term world music, while presenting a positive impression of Africa to counter against common media images of war, famine, and disease. Notable events that Africa Express has been involved in include performances at the 2012 Olympics, the Glastonbury Festival, the BBC Electric Proms, Denmark's Roskilde Festival, a tour of Syrian refugee musicians, and concerts in such places as Mali, the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, and France.
