Features

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Black-Horned Moon: Old Gods & Burning Altars

Lithuania’s Black-Horned Moon bids farewell with a final celebration of the country’s pagan past. Simon Broughton investigates…

Thursday, October 3, 2024

60 Years of Fania Records

Celebrating 60 years of Fania Records, we ask Daymé Arocena, Silvana Estrada, Roberto Fonseca, iLe, Meridian Brothers, Orquesta Akokán, Nathy Peluso, Ana Tijoux and many others to pick some Fania classics. Introduction by Erin Cobby. Interviews by Russ Slater Johnson

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Les Aunties: “We can’t get up and tell our husbands to stop mistreating us, but if it’s in the song, you can express yourself there and he will listen”

Les Aunties, a new all-female group from Chad intend to improve women’s rights in their country. A recent tour of Canada has already begun the process. “The impact is enormous,” hears Emma Rycroft

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Ibrahim Maalouf: “I’ve always believed that music should be limitless… i can blend my trumpet’s melodic lines with the sharp, rhythmic beats of rap”

Ibrahim Maalouf has drawn on everything he’s learned during his stellar career to make what might be his crowning achievement, a homage to his ancestry that is more lyrical than any instrumental album can rightly claim to be

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Seun Kuti: “Love for me is a force that can change the world” + Video Premiere

With a new album ready, his first in six years and one featuring an all-star cast – Damien Marley, Sampa The Great, Lenny Kravitz – Seun hopes to make a breakthrough: “Reaching the people without the mainstream is not easy,” he tells Jane Cornwell

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Stick in the Wheel: “There’s a long history of protest and we are part of that”

Tim Cumming talks to East London’s Stick in the Wheel about the rich loaming of folkloric and historical sources that feeds into their distinctive take on ‘the music of the people’

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Emma Dabiri's My World interview: “A lot of my politics was informed by listening to, from a young age, revolutionary Irish music”

The Irish writer and broadcaster gets lost in music, telling Emma Rycroft of meeting Bob Marley, Nigerian folklore and her recent discovery of jazz

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Frankie Archer: Giving Up The Ghosts

Violence and bigotry towards women are at the root of Frankie Archer’s folk songs. “Some of the shit that women in these 300-year-old songs went through is the same shit women are going through now,” she tells Fred Waine

Friday, September 20, 2024

Eliza Carthy's News of the Whirl: Rituals

From smashing eggs to spitting at horses to shouting ‘Yellow car!’, Eliza unpacks the strange daily rituals and superstitions that we indulge in

Thursday, September 19, 2024

Fireside Stories with June Tabor and Oysterband’s John Jones

As they prepare to embark on a final tour, June Tabor and Oysterband’s John Jones discuss the making of their 1990 classic collaborative album Freedom and Rain

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Roots Round-Up (Nuxalk Radio, Beau Cheval, Laurie Lewis and more)

A selection of essential releases from the US and Canada including new albums from Nuxalk Radio, Beau Cheval, Laurie Lewis, Jontavious Willis and La Pastourelle

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Here Comes the Calgary

Catalina Maria Johnson heads to Canada’s Calgary Folk Festival, an event beloved by its community with a unique talent for bringing artists from around the world together in rapturous communion

Friday, September 6, 2024

Five Films from Vincent Moon

To accompany our recent feature on acclaimed film-maker Vincent Moon here are a selection of films from his vast library, capturing musicians, traditions, people and rituals from around the world