Archive of links
Listen again to our monthly NOODS radio show:
We talk about creative practice, the roots of traditions and what it means to be artists exploring those forms now.
Episode 10: Peta Webb & Ken Hall
Episode 9: Lewis Robinson
Episode 8: 2020 Round-up
Episode 7: Nancy Kerr
Episode 6: Olugbenga Adelekan
Episode 5: Mazin Saleem
Episode 4: Richard Dawson
Episode 3: Anna Roberts-Gevalt
Episode 2: Laurent Fintoni
Episode 1: Nabihah Iqbal
BBC Radio 4 Michael Morpurgo's Folk Journeys
We spoke about Four Loom Weaver and how protest music is not a genre, it's a state of being.
The Social After Work Drinks playlist
The nice people at The Social asked us to do their virtual afterworks drinks on Twitter. Virtual tipples, toddies, teas and tunes for all. Or just sit in the corner nursing a solitary half. It’s all good.
Mix for Soho Radio
We did a mix for the Morning Glory show on Soho Radio. Have a listen.
Ezra Fisher's piece on Anti-Rascism and the Folk Revival
As a member of US traditional dance team Still River Sword, Fisher talks about the difficulties in engaging with traditional music and dance, when it has roots in colonialism, oppression and white supremacy. It's an essential read.
A peek into the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
We went crate digging in the audio archive at Cecil Sharp House, home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
Spitalfields Life, by The Gentle Author
This blog is an ongoing source of inspiration. We first met up with The Gentle Author to talk about Street Cries, his book full of rediscovered colourful plates of 17th century London street sellers along with the cries they used to hawk their wares - almost the only portraits of ordinary working people spanning four centuries. We'd also been researching this subject in song form, which turned into 2016's Tales from St Judes, Bethnal Green (7" vinyl and booklet). More recently, he put us in touch with the owner of a restored Georgian merchant's house on Fournier Street previously occupied by Huguenot weavers (religious refugees from 18th century France) and brokered permission for us to film a segment for the Folk on Foot podcast.
He also posted some incredible images from some old herbals, providing the seeds of inspiration for what would become the track Nine Herbs Charm, asserting that these herbs could be found on the last bomb sites of London. His commitment to a unique post every day always reveals something new about this area and beyond - of immigrants, ordinary people - showing the struggles and brilliance of a place constantly changing.
The wheel in the Fake Away video lives in our studio. It comes from an East End market barrow, the last workshop of which we visited back in 2016. The owners wouldn’t let us buy it until we’d played them a song while they welded a new metal tyre to the wooden felloe. The Gentle Author put us in touch and you can read all about Hiller Bros and their barrow business on his blog.
Guests on NTS
Nabihah Iqbal invited us onto her show to talk English folk music, and about threads of cultures that persist through different genres.