Been on before. Here's the blurb ...

Annie Briggs

The Voices of...

An intimate portrait of the iconic but elusive English folksinger Annie Briggs.

Annie Briggs was a leading figure in the English folk revival of the early 1960s, inspiring Bert Jansch (famously, in Blackwater Side), Sandy Denny, The Watersons and many more. But she was a restless spirit, travelling through the British Isles and Ireland, finding songs and living close to the earth.

As Sandy Denny depicted her in The Pond and the Stream:

Annie wanders on the land.
She loves the freedom of the air.
She finds a friend in ev'ry place she goes.
There's always a face she knows.
I wish that I was there.

And so she remains, now a grandmother living by the water in the west of Scotland. She's always resolutely resisted celebrity and commercial success, withdrawing from the folk scene in the early 1970s, but her legacy - her voice and her attitude - continue to inspire and to carry a link to life as it was once lived in 'the imagined village'.

Annie talks to Alan Hall about childhood holidays singing along with the waves, writing songs while living on a beach in west Ireland, her garden and the wildlife that she shares it with, and the ballad tradition she discovered as a teenager and that she 'belongs to'.

Producer: Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in September 2016.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07syrrs

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Another folk singer is in the same (repeated) series - Richard Dawson

For a man whose musical demeanour comes across as rough-hewn with a potency that's barely contained, Richard Dawson in person is gentle with a soft smile and opinions that are precisely worded though almost tentatively shared. He admits to a high level of everyday anxiety, yet has left a mark on contemporary folk music in England that testifies to an innate confidence in his musical vision. His albums (notably Nothing Important of 2014 and Peasant in 2017), as well as being critically acclaimed, have taken folk music into new territory that's at once ancient and avant-garde.

Speaking at his home in the north-east of England, Richard reflects on the particular qualities of his voice, the life that music has opened up to him and his ever-present companion, Trouble the cat.

Presented and produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio Four

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00075jj

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get_iplayer will get both using the pids

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