The 2023 programmes will have been mentioned on the 2023 BBC radio thread but there are a few older ones too :

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A Jig into History - 2023
Sunday Feature - R3
With a copy of Kemp’s recollection of his feat ‘Kemps Nine Daies Wonder’ under her arm, Professor Nandini Das takes to the streets of London to examine the impact of Kemp’s endeavour and explain why it had as much to do with merchant venturing as it did street and theatrical entertainment.
She’s joined by scholars Tracey Hill, Daisy Black and the former Olympian Peter Radford, all of whom believe that while Shakespeare’s legacy endures through a clear line of English Theatrical tradition, Kemp’s journey should also be seen as an early example of the enduring tradition of ordinary folk making sporting endeavour and entertainment pay.
Producer Tom Alban
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001j4rz

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very much World Music
Andy Kershaw
BBC Radio 3    ~2003-2007
Algeria - Rai music in Oran and the Kasbah of Algiers.
Algeria - Rachid Taha and the Kabilian mountains.
Marseille - Mahgreb Rap, Algerian Rai, Pacific Creole, Congolese Rumba
Turkmenistan - Christmas in Ashgabat
Mauritania - The Festival of Nomad Music
Corsica and Sardinia
Iran - Axis of Evil
North Korea, part 1
North Korea, part 2
Ethiopia - Comic Relief 2003
Mali - Mopti, Timbuktu and Bamako; Les Escrocs and Toumani Diabate
Mali - Festival in the Desert; Ali Farka Toure, Tinariwen and Robert Plant
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnwy/episodes/player

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Ane Brun - 2017
The Voice Of ,,,,
,,, her solo albums - including A Temporary Dive and It All Starts With One - reveal an artist rooted in her own sense of musical expression, alternately melancholy and playful. As she muses in Changing of the Seasons, "I guess I'm too Scandinavian."
Alan Hall visits Ane Brun at her studio in Stockholm and shares a walk through the old city, discussing Shakespeare, her family at home in Norway and the particular qualities of her distinctive voice."
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08slxy6
& see the mudcat thread
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=115049

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Annie Briggs / Anne Briggs - 2016
The Voices of...
"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.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07syrrs

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Bert Jansch(1965) - 2018
Classic Scottish Albums
Davie Scott chats with the late Bert Jansch about his eponymous debut album.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06c2f2y

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Busking & Billy Waters - Mar 2023
Free Thinking
Billy Waters became a celebrity in early 19th century London as a talented street performer.
New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen and Mary L. Shannon join Rana Mitter to tell Billy's story and those of other musicians performing on the streets of London at the time.
Mary L. Shannon's book 'Billy Waters Is Dancing' will be published later this year[2023].
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001k1g8
> 4:45    (~19 minutes)

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Capercaillie - Delirium(1991) - 2018
Classic Scottish Albums
Davie Scott highlights Capercaillie's dynamic album Delirium.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06lhxh9

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Cara Dillon - Oct 2023
Front Row
Singer Cara Dillon is known globally for her interpretations of traditional Irish songs. As she performs at the Belfast International Arts Festival, she explains why she’s taking a new direction with her upcoming album [”Coming Home”], the first time she’s released an album of original songs.   
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rgz9
> 13:40    (~12 minutes)

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Chasing Jamie Allan - 2023
Open Country
Jamie Allan was a celebrated musician and friend of the aristocracy, but also a thief, bigamist, and deserter. Known as "The Dukes Piper", he is the source of many songs and legends in Northumbria.
In this programme, folk singer Jez Lowe traces one of these legends across the Rivers Ouse and Nidd, over which Jamie Allan supposedly fled from army conscription to freedom in Scotland.
As he crosses the waterways of North Yorkshire, Jez finds out about the life and adventures of this Robin Hood figure from the 18th century, and enjoys some of the music he would have played.
Produced by Helen Lennard
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001l9dx

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The Dawning of the Day - 2022
The Lyric Feature - RTÉ
The story behind Patrick Kavanagh's On Raglan Road
Particularly interesting are the recollections from Hilda Moriarty's son Daragh O'Malley.
www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/22187171-the-dawning-of-the-day-the-lyric-feature/

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Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns(2003) - 2020
Classic Scottish Albums
Davie Scott chats with Eddi Reader about her love of Scotland's national bard.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0811qp7

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Black women and cancer, Eleanor McEvoy, Shamima Begum ruling, Yazidi women, A Victorian dress diary - 2023
Woman's Hour
Eleanor McEvoy is one of Ireland's foremost songwriters and has worked with the likes of U2, Sinead O'Connor and Mary Black. She is the composer and co-performer of A Woman's Heart, the title track for the best-selling Irish album in Irish history, and one of Ireland's favourite folk songs, which recently featured in the award winning Derry Girls. One of Eleanor's songs, Sophie, is used in treatment centres to treat patients with eating disorders. She joins Nuala live in the studio to discuss her UK tour, the inspiration behind the tracks of her most recent album Gimme Some Wine and to perform the track South Anne Street.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jc74
> ~17:20 (10 minutes)

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Playwright Ryan Calais Cameron, musician Stewart Copeland and is Morris dancing having a moment? - 2023
Front Row
Next Monday is May Day when morris dancers will perform at dawn to greet the summer. Morris dancing is itself enjoying a moment in the sun: Boss Morris, an all-female folk dance group, performed with the Best New Artist winners, Wet Leg, at this year's Brit Awards. Samira is joined by Michael Heaney, author of a new history of the dance; the musician Rob Harbron, who composes new morris tunes; and Lily Cheetham of Boss Morris – who will dance for us.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001l986
> skip to ~30:30

Michael Heaney's book :
The Ancient English Morris Dance

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Government Song Woman - 2023
Sunday Feature - R3
American musician Rhiannon Giddens investigates the fascinating life and recordings of the folk song collector Sidney Robertson Cowell. Travelling thousands of miles all over the US in the depression era, Cowell was willing to track down songs in unlikely places, once writing "I don't scare easily." She spent a night riding in a hearse in Wisconsin just to question the driver and hear his songs, walked up mountains to record lumberjacks and traditional Appalachian singers and poled three miles downriver after dark on a makeshift raft to find a famed fiddler in his goldmine in California.
Listening to her recordings is like travelling back in time; they capture the voices of so many different nationalities that emigrated to the US, but she also made recordings on the Aran Islands in Ireland. During her lifetime Cowell was marginalised like so many women collectors of that period, but in this celebration of her recordings and observations, Giddens finally gives her work the attention it deserves.

- Cathy Hiebert Kerst, folklorist and archivist who catalogued Sidney's recordings of the WPA California Folk Project.
- Sheryl Kaskowitz, scholar of American music and author of forthcoming book: The Music Unit: FDR's Hidden New Deal Program that Tried to Save America from the Great Depression—One Song at a Time.
- Jim P Leary, a folklorist and scholar of Scandinavian studies, and a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of Folksongs of Another America.
- Dr. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile writer, researcher and musician (she plays fiddle with Rhiannon at the end of the programme) who has written about the collecting work of Sidney Robertson Cowell on the Aran Islands in the 1950s.
- Robert Cochrane, Professor of English and folklore specialist at the University of Arkansas.
- Peggy Seeger, folksinger.
- California Gold:
Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell: https://www.loc.gov/collections/sidney-robertson-cowell-northern-california-folk-music/about-this-collection/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jlm9

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Barbara Demick on North Korea; Dungeons and Dragons controversy; folk musicians Hack-Poets Guild - 2023
Front Row
Hack-Poets Guild is a collaboration between the renowned folk musicians Marry Waterson, Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann.
Their new album Blackletter Garland is inspired by the collection of broadside ballads in the Bodleian Library, news sheets that circulated between the 16th and 20th Centuries.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kgrv
> ~26:00

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Hannah Peel - 2018
The Voices of...
Hannah Peel inhabits many different worlds. She can, blithely, be described as a singer-songwriter, known for stripped back renditions of 80s pop songs, accompanying herself with a hand-turned music box. But then she's also composed an epic concept album for brass band and electronics and provided the music for a theatrical re-imagining of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, as well as being a session musician as a singer, violinist, trombonist, keyboard player and arranger.
Some a bit folky ,,, rather than folk?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09yddx9

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The Hills are Alive! Commoners Choir in Calderdale - 2023
Ramblings -
Boff Whalley is best known for Tubthumping with the band Chumbawamba but now he’s a core member of the Leeds based Commoners Choir which he founded. They sing about the world around them, about inequality and injustice, and they also love to walk.
Cath Long, a fellow member, wrote to Ramblings to ask Clare to join them on a hike in the South Pennines near Todmorden in Calderdale, West Yorkshire.
So, on a chilly, wet and blustery Saturday in early January, they met by the Shepherd’s Rest pub and headed into the hills to ramble and sing.
Boff created a choir manifesto, and one aim was to 'rehearse until we're brilliant' and they really are. Their Skelmanthorpe Flag Song (https://youtu.be/SIsryw_3gfk), which they performed at the historic Basin Stone, was heard by fellow walkers at least two miles down in the valley. On a circular hike, which began and ended at the pub, they stopped off at Gaddings Dam, often described as the highest beach in the UK, where some choir members took the plunge and sang out from the wind-blown waves of the reservoir.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hnmg

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Karine Polwart 'Faultlines' - 2022
Classic Scottish Albums
Karine Polwart talks about the making of her debut solo album Faultlines which dominated the 2005 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards
This 29 minute version includes music in the background.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015sjz
longer version; no music, just chat
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bybjcj

   

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Piper Kathryn Tickell performs, ,,,, - Oct 2023
Front Row
Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening’s new album, Cloud Horizons, fuses synthesizers with a bone flute, a sistrum – very old Egyptian instrument - and lyrics based on an inscription in Latin carved on a stone in Northumberland nearly 2 millennia ago.
Kathryn talks to Samira about this ancient Northumbrian futurism and plays her smallpipes, live.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r7qr
first item \ starts @ ~1minute

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Les Barker - "Eisteddfod" - 2011
Word of Mouth
Tired of living next to his noisy neighbours, Les Barker opted out of urban Manchester and moved to North Wales. "Although I'd spent half a lifetime an hour's drive away, I'd never heard of Hedd Wyn. Or any other major figure in Welsh history or literature, apart from Max Boyce and Dylan Thomas." So Les began to learn...and learn...and learn.....
"After toying briefly with 'Teach Yourself Welsh', I went on a four-day course in Denbigh; Craig Jones was the tutor. Over the summer I did a couple of week-long courses in Denbigh, initially with another Mr Jones, but he went off sick and was replaced by a Mrs Jones. Wales is full of them."
"Being a beginner is frustrating. After a lifetime of being fluent, I suddenly had the vocabulary and grammar of a three-year-old." But Les persevered, and is now a serious performer on the Welsh poetry scene, and one of the organisers of this summer's Eisteddfod. Chris Ledgard meets Les as he makes last minute preparations for the festival.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012wjcz
Mudcat thread
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=139794

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Front Row reviews the Frasier reboot and performance from folk musician Martin Hayes - October 2023
Front Row
Martin Hayes has gone from playing the fiddle in his father’s ceilidh band in County Clare to performing for President Obama at the White House.
Martin brings his band, The Common Ground Ensemble to perform in the Front Row studio.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Corinna Jones
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r7zr
> 11:00    (17 minutes)

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Patrick Kavanagh: the Inexhaustible Adventure of a Gravelled Yard - 2018
Sunday Feature
Theo Dorgan wanders the streets of Dublin and lanes of County Monaghan, tracing his life and significance.
Only a little bit concerning Raglan Road; good programme though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwmby

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Rachel and Becky Unthank - 2018
The Voices of... Series 3
Rachel and Becky share their sense of belonging to the landscape of the north-east, their inevitable attraction to melancholy and the qualities that allow each other's voice to blend so effortlessly.
And, in their studio in a Northumbrian farm-yard, they sing their signature melodies and a duet that most typically sounds for the two of them.
Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09zxl65

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this is already listed but see extra links for the mudcat thread.
The Real MacColl - 2015
A century on from his birth, John Cooper Clarke looks back at MacColl's early years and formative influences and discovers how his upbringing went on to inform the important work he would go on to do in theatre, radio and in the British folk revival.   
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ykk4y
see the mudcat thread
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=157014#3703350
for links to RTE programmes about him broadcast the same year.

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Richard Dawson - 2020
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.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00075jj

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Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris and the Spell Songs Singers
Scotland Outdoors - 2021
Helen Needham with the Spell Songs Collective ahead of the release of 'Let the Light In'.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b378fy

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