For some proper folk that’s grass roots try
Penny Black based in Lancashire they have a few tracks songs on some sites and also cd on there Web site they are brilliant live as well
Favourite Marthy Carthy album?
I would probably select Prince Heathen 1969, a duet with Dave Swarbrick an extraordinary fiddle player. ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’ is a border ballad full of sex and death (Fairport’s ‘Matty Groves’ will be an electric version) ‘Prince Heathen’ is another stand-out track for me. Martin has a finger-picking technique and percussive quality to his playing. His voice is nasal, but mellowed over the years. Waterson Carthy and his work with the various groups he’s played with have been influential. It seems curious that there were objections to guitars being played with folk song when he first performed in the clubs. Live, Martin would sometimes not engage the audience in conversation and spend several minutes tuning and retuning his instruments, but his performances where always worth the wait.
He’s getting on in years now, but has a live streamed concert on May 1st.https://ti.to/fmsny-online/martin-carthy/en Time is 3pm ETD that’s 8pm BST. $10 donation requested.
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I saw Martin Carthy with Eliza at a local theatre a few years ago and they were brilliant 
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New to me, but clearly the salt of the earth. Bernard Wrigley is still going strong and has had a successful career as an actor. His ‘Molecatcher’ live with accordion was a comic disruption in a sometimes didactically serious political programme at the Grey C-ck in Birmingham in the late 70s. He’s on You Tube. I don’t know if the club scene will recover or if younger generations will listen to improper folk.
Really looking forward to “Leftover Feelings”. The new album by John Hiatt with the Jerry Douglas Band out 21/5.
Cara Dillon, with or without Sam Lakeman, is also a very good listen. ‘Wanderer’ from 2017 is my favourite.
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We saw Cara, Sam and their three children on stage with their Christmas show 2019. I suspect that was our most recent live music. ‘Wanderer’ I agree is excellent.
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Lisa Knapp plays the fiddle and is a singer-songwriter. She has a clear voice and her records can evoke an uncanny mood. Wild and Undaunted (2007),
Hidden Seam (2013) Till April is Dead – A Garland Of May (2017) Lisa’s website
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I enjoy listening to an Irish fiddler (or to a fiddler playing in the Irish tradition). Chris Haigh’s Fiddling Around is informative.
Tommy Peoples played in the Donegal style. He was a police officer in Dublin for a time, but recorded widely and played in The Bothy Band. His daughter Siobhan Peoples plays jigs with Tommy. I think they are Capt Wyke’s and The Bank of Turf (Turf is peat, which is dug for fuel)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qAH2ravRrU) Tommy liked to play pub sessions and seems to have been a private man.
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I’m a sucker for a fiddle, be it in the Celtic tradition or Klezmer.
A couple of examples of the former: McMaster and Hayes. First from Cape Breton and then from Clare.
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Sticking with Celtic fiddle, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (and Ciaran Tourish) of the great Irish trad band Altan. The finest Irish traditional band I’ve ever been lucky enough to see.
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Stokie, interested in your thoughts on the future of folk music… retaining a following amongst younger listeners.
Folk sub genres with a modern twist do happen
Freak Folk a few years back - try Devendra Banharts FF sampler “Golden Apples of the Sun” (not the Bradbury novel!)
Folktronica - Lau, CocoRosie, King Creosote + Jon Hopkins (electronic genius)
Folk Rockers Mumford&Sons, Edward Sharpe & Magnetic Zeroes.
Love all of the above, but regular pick is Waterson Carthy “Broken Ground”
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As some may know, I’m involved with our local arts organisation, WemsFest. Most of our events are what you’d call ‘folk’ in its broadest sense. Despite being on the south coast and a long way for them to come, we’ve developed a bit of a reputation for Celtic music. This gives me a great chance to hear music I wouldn’t otherwise seek out. One of my favourites is Breabach, who are quite brilliant. Skerryvore are another, though on the noisier side - when two sets of pipes are playing together it’s quite something.
John McCusker is a great fiddle player and was once married to the wonderful Kate Rusby. He often plays with Mike McGoldrick and John Doyle and they are worth seeking out. I find the folk musicians are really friendly and modest and always happy to chat about music. I spent an hour in the pub with Ric Sanders - he plays electric fiddle with Fairport - before one of our shows in 2019 and the range of his musical interests is amazing - we spent a while recommending Anouar Brahem albums. Is Algerian oud music folk? Very probably.
If anyone is in the south of may be worth looking at our website to see what’s on. A couple of Forum members have popped up at our shows and it would be great to see more. www.wemsfest.com
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For those of you who like fiddle music have a listen to the highly talented Scottish guy Duncan Chisholm. Especially this Album Affric which is my favourite 
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I been to see McCusker, Doyle and McGoldrick. John McCuskers energy when playing is amazing no wonder he needed a towel to mop the sweat up.
I bought the triple vinyl album “Yella’ Hoose” from him before I went home because they were so good.
I have a Ric Sanders solo album “Whenever” that’s well worth a listen.
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I really like Skipinnish as well. When they are in full flow it’s quite a sound.
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I could listen to Martin Hayes playing almost anything. But if I had to pick just one CD it would be Live in Seattle.
Somehow live performance seems to bring an extra intensity to his playing and the slow build of tension over nearly half an hour in the long medley is masterful. You can feel the excitement mounting in the audience too.
Roger
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That’s an excellent question, Dis!
But tough to answer especially in the current circumstances. The future of folk music retaining a following amongst younger listeners? Live performance has been central to folk: clubs, touring, festivals. I know some established musicians have been considering their future. Will live performance recover? Lau have gigs announced starting from October 30th.
Traditional music in Ireland and Scotland is connected to Cultural Nationalism. I’d expect them to thrive. These traditions are porous, the introduction of bouzouki to Irish traditional music. ‘Pipeline’ is on BBC sounds and has a variety of material, sometimes unconventional, which swerves from the military tradition. The warmest welcome we had at Sidmouth as a family was from a group of pipers who offered to teach my daughter the pipes for free, I think she was about 10. They had taught their children and grandchildren, so it was an established thing.
I would expect a lot of musicians to have developed their home studios and digital presence.
The music colleges train many professional musicians and people who go on to have a portfolio career, teaching in schools and colleges and privately, playing, composing, sometimes doing other jobs to bring money in. Newcastle University have a degree in Folk and Traditional Music. But other music colleges train people who become folk musicians. The Destroyers are an energetic big band with elements of Balkan, Celtic, Jazz and Folk mashed up. Their origins lie in what is now Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (which has an energetic Jazz department) and the Birmingham performance scene. So there’s a cross over. Jim Moray (brother of Jackie Oates) studied classical composition at Birmingham.
The EFDSS has a modernising agenda championing the folk arts with a policy of equality, diversity and inclusion. This will bear fruit. All cultural organisations have outreach policies. But the kids have their own music, my daughter now listens to a lot of rap.
I’d expect the growth of field recordings and ambient, mixing these in to live performance and records. Cosmo Sheldrake? But I prefer Lisa Knapp.
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger described ‘the invention of tradition’. This argues that many traditions thought to be organic and ancient were really invented by middle class intellectuals in the Nineteenth Century. English Folk music as collected and promoted by Cecil Sharp can be seen as one such tradition. He focussed on rural, rather than industrial material, and selected what he considered to be pure and morally improving. No smut, no music hall. Few industrial songs. He disparaged the work of rival collectors, especially women. I’ve not read Steve Roud Folksong in England but it seems to offer a revisionist reading of Sharp and view folksong as a constructed tradition. In my youth I heard A. L. (Bert) Lloyd sing and Charles Parker along with Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl. Bert Lloyd was a song writer and poet and creatively fabricated a song from bits of traditional material he had found in books. So the creative collector and songwriter has been with us for a long time and I have no problem with that. I think all the songs I’ve been able to find on British canals are written after Jon Raven’s The Bold Navigators 1975.
Political songs will probably rise up. Chris Wood wrote Hollow Point about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in London by armed police. It is a ballad, with a conventional tune and draws on traditional material ‘Arise you drowsy sleepers’
Instrumentalists will produce amazing work. Gwenifer Raymond She describes herself as an American Primitive Musician.
But I’m just a fan and have no fixed views as to what will catch on. I read Joe Boyd’s White Bicycles and it is clear he had a transforming influence on Folk-Rock which was my own initiation along with being taken to the clubs by fellow literature students. One of whom was a singer from Lancashire with an amazing voice.
Folk is a constructed and developing tradition and really wide ranging and difficult to define. Perhaps this should be seen as a strength? Wrote more than I intended. TL:DR It is is a constructed tradition - who knows what the future will bring?
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Ah thank you answer to 60 across in this month’s Mojo magazine crossword “British folk band whose name is Orcadian for natural light” 3 letters.
I already had the ‘U’. So that works.
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On tonight then streaming for a month …
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