Songlines receives Lifetime Achievement Award

“As algorithms try to flatten our culture and take the ‘human’ out of curation, to show the world the richness of traditional and folk music at this time, I’m of the opinion that we need Songlines magazine more than ever.” Canadian musician and broadcaster Tom Power delivered these words as he presented the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award in Business to Songlines at this year’s Folk Alliance International Folk Music Awards (IFMAs). After Songlines’ publisher James Anderson-Hanney received the award, traditional Québécois quintet and winners of the 2023 Songlines Music Awards, Le Vent Du Nord took the stage for an a capella rendition of ‘Turlute du Mai’ in tribute to the origins and continued legacy of the magazine.

Hosted by the annual Folk Alliance International (FAI) conference, the 2025 award ceremony unfolded in Montréal as hundreds of musicians, labels and organisations gathered to participate in what is deemed “the world’s largest gathering of the folk music community and industry.”

The IFMA Lifetime Achievement Awards are presented in honour of Elaine Weissman, the conference’s founder, to a living recipient, a memorial recipient and an active organisation in recognition of their substantial impact upon the international folk community. The Legacy Lifetime Achievement Award was presented in memory of musician Lesley Riddle by Alice Randall for his unsung but crucial role in the development of American country music. Iconic folk-rock duo The Indigo Girls received the Living Lifetime Achievement Award as they celebrated a nearly 40-year, boundary-pushing career. Crys Matthews walked away with Artist of the Year, while Song of the Year went to ‘$20 Bill (for George Floyd)’, originally written by Tom Prasada-Rao and performed by Dan Navarro & Janice Magness, and Album of the Year to Halfway to Houston by Susan Werner.

Over the five days of FAI, hundreds of emerging artists transformed some 80 suites of the Le Centre Sheraton hotel into performance spaces. As the never-ending lineup prepared showcases, they repurposed kitchenettes as concession stands, bedside lamps as stage lights, and nightstands as amplifier pedestals. All through the winding halls of the hotel, like-minded folk(ies) shared sacred moments as they navigated what became a true labyrinth of folk’s modern face. One could peek into room 1014 and hear burgeoning Montréal fusion crew El Balcón virtuosically reinterpreting Latin standards to the ferocious beat of Bulgarian rhythms or shuffle two doors down to witness Andrew Wells-Oberegger’s emotional mix of Scandinavian and Mediterranean ballads. The conference schedule accounts only for booked showcases, not even beginning to cover the multitude of impromptu jam sessions ensuing in corridors, stairwells and elevators.

In the delegates’ speeches and the conversations between attendees, the same question kept coming up: ‘What is folk?’ FAI’s recognition of Songlines comes as an answer to its understood identity: folk music lives unbound to country or creed, much like the music we are honoured to write about. Upon accepting Artist of the Year, Crys Matthews may have said it best: “Thank you for keeping me inspired to continue the tradition of folk music – the music of the people, and, yes, that does mean all of the people.”