Highlights BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards

GLOBAL FUSION MUSIC

GLOBAL FUSION MUSIC

APPLAUSE

Hello and a very warm welcome to the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards

live from London in the Royal Albert Hall.

Very much the Nettlebed Folk Club of the Kensington area.

The folk awards are Radio 2's 18th annual celebration of folk,

roots and acoustic music.

We are going to showcase the very best work by folk musicians

from the past 12 months and pay tribute to some masterful

artists who have dedicated their careers to folk and roots music.

As ever we have an incredible assortment, a melange,

a smorgasbord of live music lined up.

OK, let's have our first award of the evening.

This is for Best Duo and to present the awards is the Oscar-winning

director and animator behind some of film and TV's much loved

claymation characters including Morph and Gregg Wallace.

Please welcome Peter Lord.

APPLAUSE

Who designed this trophy?

I'm just saying...

They've been ripping off Morph for about 20 years

and I haven't seen a penny.

The best duo is Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton.

Thank you very much.

It's quite embarrassing, I was wearing the same shirt

that was on the photos there.

Now to some more live music.

This next group released their debut album in 2016 and are nominated

for the Horizon Award, a product of Orkney's thriving

and nurturing musical community.

Please welcome Fara.

# Three Fishers went sailing out into the west

# Into the west as the sun came up

# Each thought of the woman that loved him the best

# Children stood watching them out of the town

# Oooooo

# Oooooo

# Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower

# And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down

# They looked at the squall and they looked at the shower

# And the night-wrack came rolling in ragged and brown

# The night-wrack came rolling in ragged and brown

# For the storms be sudden and the waters be deep

# And the harbour bar be moaning

# Ooooo

# Ooooo

# Three corpses lay out in the shining sands

# And the morning gleam as the tide went down

# The women were weeping and wringing their hands

# For those who would never come back to the town

# Men must work and women must weep

# For there is little to earn and many to keep

# And the harbour bar be moaning

# Men must work and women must weep

# For the sooner it's over

# The sooner to sleep

# And goodbye to the bar and its moaning

# Goodbye to the bar and its moaning.#

APPLAUSE

Now, for the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award.

To present this award, a founding member of a folkrock

institution, Fairport Convention.

Fairport themselves were mostly teenagers when they started in 1967

but they now boast a combined age of 328.

Please welcome Simon Nicholl.

APPLAUSE

Thank you, Mark and Julie for reminding me of how

being in Fairport has taken me from O levels, both of them,

to a different world, one now including statins

and bus passes.

The turn that has won the 2017 BBC Young Folk Awards

are Josie Duncan Pablo Lafuente.

Now for the first of tonight's Lifetime Achievement Awards,

which is given to recognise really outstanding contributions.

You probably gathered that from the title of the awards.

The recipient is a singer songwriter guitarist originally from Glasgow

but raised in Dorset.

He now calls California his home.

In the mid-60s, he compered at legendary Soho folk clubs

like Les Cousins and Bungie's Folk Cellar.

By the late 1970s he was topping the charts around the world.

To present this award, one of the most recognisable voices

in the history of British broadcasting, would you give a huge

welcome to Tony Blackburn.

APPLAUSE

There is a reason why I'm here, because in the early 60s,

Al Stewart was in my band, known as Tony Blackburn

the Swinging Bells.

He has owned up to appearing with Alan Parsons, Jimmy Page,

Rick Wakeman, but as far as I know, he seems to have forgotten that

actually, I was the one who gave him his chance,

The Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Al Stewart.

# Fishing boats go out across the evening water

# Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border

# The wind whips up the waves so loud

# The ghost moon sails among the clouds

# And turns the rifles into silver on the border

# On my wall, the colours of the maps are running

# From Africa, the winds, they talk of changes coming

# The torches flare up in the night

# The hand that sets the farms alight

# Has spread the word to those who're waiting on the border

# In the village where I grew up

# Nothing seems the same

# Still you never see the change

# From day to day

# No one notices the customs slip away

# Late last night the rain was knocking on my window

# I moved across the darkened room and in the lamp-glow

# I thought I saw down in the street

# The spirit of the century

# Telling us that we're all standing

# On the border

# In the islands where I grew up

# Nothing seems the same

# It's just the patterns that remain

# An empty shell

# But there's a strangeness in the air you feel too well

# The fishing boats go out across the evening water

# Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border

# The wind whips up the waves so loud

# The ghost moon sails among the clouds

# Turns the rifles into silver

# On the border

# On the border

Thank you very much.

Now to the award for Best Traditional Track.

To present the award, someone I first saw at the Manchester Apollo

in 1979 as part of a Two Tone package tour, and so impressed

was I by the sound and style of her band The Selector,

I formed semi-legendary Manchester ska act Bobsleigh and the Crestas,

sales of whose debut album, it's hard to be precise on these

things but they range between 13 at the lower end right

up to 17.

You're very best mood and stomping pleas for the original rude

girl, Pauline Black.

Well, my initial foray into music began in a folk club in Coventry,

and those folkies embraced me and I embraced them.

Indeed, my first paying gig was supporting Bert Jansch in 1978.

I sang ten songs and I was paid ?10.

I thought I had arrived.

I've never lost my love for traditional folk

and it is a great pleasure for me to present the award for Best

Traditional Track to Daoiri Farrell.

# Come all ye gallant poachers that ramble free of care

# Who wander out on moonlight nights with your dog

# And gun and snare

# Oh the hare and lofty pheasant

# You will have at your command

# Not thinking on the last career spent

# On Van Diemen's Land

# Young Thomas Brown from in the town, Jack Murphy

# And poor Joe were three

# And straight away transported unto Van Diemen's Land

# And the first day we landed there upon the fatal shore

# the planters gathered around, might be 20 score, well

# they ranked us up like horses and sold us out of hand

# and they yoked us to the plough, brave boys

# for to work Van Diemen's Land.

# The cottages that we lived in, they are made of songs of theirs,

# we have rotting straw for bedding, but we dared not say a word,

# and we rigged our huts with firing and we slumber when we can,

# for to keep those beasts at bay around Van Diemen's Land.

# God bless our wives and families, likewise that happy shore,

# that sweet isle of contentment that we shall see no more,

# and for those wretched females, see them we seldom can,

# there are 40 men to every woman on Van Diemen's Land

# At nighttime when I'm slumbering, I have a pleasant dream,

# that I'm sitting by a cool green lass down by a purling stream,

# or I'm wandering through a meadow fair with my sweetheart by my hand

# and I waken broken-hearted, still on Van Diemen's Land

# For 14 years is a long, long time and that's our sentence run

# for nothing but the poaching, it's all I've ever done

# and I'd give up both my dog and gun and poaching every man

# and I'd let go the harship still on Van Diemen's Land

# If I had ?500 all laid out in my hand, well I'd give it up

# for poaching if that I could command,

# then I'd retire to Erin's isle

# and I'd be a happy man

# and I'd bid farewell to poaching likewise Van Diemen's Land

# Yeah #.

Thank you, thank you.

Now it's time for the Folk Awards Hall of Fame.

This year marks 50 years since the death of a true folk

icon, Woody Guthrie.

To pay tribute to Woody Guthrie, please welcome an Englishman,

but someone who Woody's own daughter, Nora, called

the punk incarnation of her father, it's Billy Bragg.

Thank you very much.

It's great that the Radio 2 Folk Awards are honouring

Woody Guthrie here tonight.

He was someone who was greatly influenced by the folk

music of these islands, who once wrote how he'd learned

from his Scottish descended great-grandmother the folk songs

of the British Islands.

He learned them through the oral tradition, he was at the far end

of that Elizabethan balladeer tradition that went out from these

islands, when people went across the Atlantic to build

a new home in America and Canada.

Conversely, he was the first real singer-songwriter, and certainly,

the first alternative songwriter.

He was also arguably the first punk rocker.

I say that because he painted antifascist slogans on his guitars

30, 40 years before the Clash thought about doing that.

Woody's also, I think, the father of the topical song tradition.

That we love so much in the folk audiences.

The great thing is all these years later, 70, 80 years,

after he wrote the songs, they still have great relevance

to us today, such as this one.

# I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round

# Just a wandrin' worker, Who goes from town to town

# And the police make it hard for me,

# No matter where I go

# And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

# My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,

# A long and dusty road that a million feet have trod

# Rich man took my home and drove me from my door

# And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

# I ain't got no home in this world anymore

# Was farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor

# My crops leading into the banker's store

# My wife took down and died all on the cabin floor

# And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

# No, I ain't got no home in this world anymore

# I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn

# I been working, mister

# Since the day I was born

# Now I worry all the time

# Like I never did before

# I ain't got no home in this world anymore

# Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see

# This world is such a great and a funny place to be

# The gamblin' man is rich

# and the workin' man is poor,

# And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

APPLAUSE in this world anymore

Billy Bragg!

Now, last year a new collection of songs were written to accompany

an exhibition that took place at the V's Museum of Childhood.

It explored the history of forced child migration when poor

or orphaned children from the UK were sent to Canada and Australia

in a scheme which has since been labelled shameful and misguided.

Tonight we have a special performance of some of those songs

to help highlight that story.

The Ballads of Child Migration.

APPLAUSE

Migrant children who left Britain had very scant

information often about their past.

Often brothers and sisters were split up and sent

to different places, sometimes different countries.

Once overseas it was not uncommon for migrants to experience terrible

cultures of abuse in institutions like the Fairbridge farm

schools in Australia.

Children were often beaten and mistreated in the name

of religion, in a supposed attempt to cleanse their souls.

Here's the voice of former child migrant Bob Taylor.

We always copped a smack around the head.

Or the ear.

For something trivial.

Without any warning whatsoever.

And I can't stand being anywhere unless my back is to the wall.

If I'm sitting in a restaurant I want to make sure I can see

everybody because I still have that fear.

# I stood on the shore in Southampton

# Salt wind in my hair, a case in my hand

# We were going to Western Australia

# And it made me the man that I am

# I am

# It made me the man that I am

# I don't like to talk about Fairbridge

# What happened there I still don't understand

# These days I sleep with the lights on

# It made me the man that I am

# I am

# It made me the man that I am #.

There are many ways to carry scars.

The physical ones seem to heal but the psychological scars that

are left with us are terribly hard.

I cry a lot, still, because I believed religious people were kind.

When a Mercy nun came on the TV to be interviewed and she had

the gall to turn around and say they beat us so they

could make us pure...

It's just ridiculous.

The voice of former child migrant Patricia Carlson.

There are about 2000 former British child migrants still alive today

and many bear mental scars which are as a result

of being sent away from home at such a young age.

Although public apologies have been made by both the British

and Australian Prime Ministers, there's no easy way

to ease the pain, the traumatic memories

and a deep sense of loneliness that the migration schemes caused.

These songs are dedicated to all former child migrants

and of course we also think of the current generation of child

migrants across the world, who are searching for a home

and safety, today.

# A hundred small suitcases sat in the dark

# Nametagged and labelled and bound for Australia

# Round up like soldier boys out on parade

# Ready for sailing away

# Small hands to carry them over the sea

# With a life that for most of them they can't believe

# They're bound for Canada

# For better or worse

# Small cases full of big dreams

# What tiny treasures are hidden inside

# A short lifetime's memories to take to Australia

# A letter, photograph, a locket of hair

# A reminder of someone who'll never be there

# Small hands to carry them over the sea

# The life that for most of them they can't believe

# They're bound for paradise

# For better or worse

# Small cases full of big dreams

# Small cases full of big dreams #.

APPLAUSE

The Ballads of Child Migration.

With the Queensbridge Chamber Choir from Hackney.

Give them a big round of applause.

APPLAUSE

The Best Album award.

To present this award, a Grade A movie buff

who was catapulted to fame after hosting a cult film corner

during my late-night graveyard shift show on the now-defunct Radio 1.

LAUGHTER

He now has to settle for being the Observer's chief film

critic and hosting a moderately popular film review show

with someone called Simon Mayo.

Thrice winner of the high barnet best kept quiff award,

please welcome Mark Kermode!

APPLAUSE

Good evening.

For the last 30 years I've played stand-up bass,

double bass, in a skiffle band.

LIGHT APPLAUSE

That's the very definition of a ripple of applause.

And I was going to say the thing about, I understand that spending

three decades playing stand-up bass in a skiffle band makes

you supremely unqualified to say anything at all about music.

However...

When I got here tonight, the very first thing that happened

was that Billy Bragg came up and gave me a copy of his book,

How Skiffle Changed The World.

So, this is the moment to say, I'm Mark, I play skiffle and I'm

not ashamed, all right.

CHEERING

The winner of the award tonight is, in fact, a collaboration.

It's a hand across-the-board project that brought together ten very

talented musicians mainly from England and Scotland.

They got together on an island and they wondered about what it

meant to be separated.

And they produced something which is timely and beautiful and brilliant.

That, ironically, brought them and us together.

The winner of the award for Best Album is Songs Of Separation.

CHEERING

This project was supposed to last six days in 2015.

These amazing women and some that haven't been able to be with us

today came together to celebrate the differences between English

and Scottish music.

And music is the great connector.

It's the thing that brings us together, so I guess

what I want to say is, let's keep on connecting.

APPLAUSE

# There is a Whitehawk in the woods

# Kills a man who drinks his blood...#

It's got two harps on it.

Wow.

Thank you to everyone that I have ever played music with.

And thank you to the people of London today that helped me

on the Tube with my harp.

You're great.

Thank you very much. Cheers.

APPLAUSE

Time for some more music.

Our next performer started singing on the London folk scene

as a teenager in the mid-1950s.

In 1959 she travelled with Texan song collector Alan Lomax

to the southern states of America, collecting folk, blues

and spiritual music, to create a resource

that is valued to this day.

She recorded many wonderful EPs and LPs of traditional English

songs and has been called the secret Queen of England by admirers.

Last year she released her wonderful new album Lodestar, her first

recording in decades.

And she's nominated tonight for both Folk Singer

of the Year and Best Album.

Singing Washed Ashore, I don't need to ask you for it,

but your warmest welcome for Shirley Collins.

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

In a small downland church on the South Downs,

but close to the sea, if you walk through the graveyard

there is a simple wooden cross.

There's no name on it, just the words, washed

ashore carved in it.

# As a lady was walking down by the seaside

# A poor drowned sailor she chanced there to spy

# When first she saw the sailor he put her to a stand

# For she knew it t'was her true love by the mark on his hand

# In yonder green churchyard this couple was layed

# And a stone for remembrance placed over their grave

# Saying 'our joys they are all over

# All pleasures are fled

# We shall lie here forever, the grave is our bed' #.

Thank you.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The wonderful Shirley Collins singing again after more than 30

years away from the stage.

With fellow musicians Pete Cooper, David Arthur and Ian Kearey.

Now we move onto the second of tonight's Lifetime

Achievement Awards.

Presented to the artists who have enriched the genre

and our lives with their music.

To present this award, I'm very pleased to introduce a singer,

songwriter and producer who assembled some

of the finest records of the Punk and New Wave era.

And he's performed alongside this Lifetime Achievement Award winner

on and off since the 1980s.

Please welcome, still sporting a resplendent quiff, Nick Lowe.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are thankfully a number

of artists still with us who have enjoyed long and illustrious

careers, but it's hard to think of one who,

over more than five decades, has delivered the musical goods

as comprehensively as Ry Cooder has.

APPLAUSE

There is not time enough to do justice here to his

acclaimed film score work.

Or indeed to consider the proposition that although he's

a hugely knowledgeable and beloved folk musician, his appreciation

and ear for a great pop song has also informed much of what he's done

and makes him, if possible, even cooler.

It's my great pleasure to present the Lifetime

Achievement Award to Ry Cooder.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE

Thank you Nick.

That's very nice.

Back in Santa Monica, in the early '60s,

the New Lost City Ramblers came through town.

I saw them at the Folk Club in West Hollywood and I

thought to myself - well, these guys they're

not from the cabin.

You know.

They're not cotton mill workers and so forth.

Mike Seeger, John Cohen and Tom Paley.

I said - they learned to do it and they do it perfectly.

So, there's hope for a boy from Santa Monica.

I went to Tom Paley and I said, "Would you possibly consider

giving me lessons?"

And he said "Sure."

And then began to teach me some things.

The big news was these open tunings.

You tuned the instrument to an open chord.

A beautiful sound.

That was the big news.

And that's what I'm going to do right about now, soon as I walk over

there and I want to say that really did it.

That opened the door.

APPLAUSE

Now Ry is going to perform a song from his classic album.

Paradise and Lunch and incidentally, this song was collected

in Mississippi in 1959 by Alan Lomax and one Shirley Collins,

ladies and gentlemen, Mr Ry Cooder.

OK.

# Jesus is on that mainline

# Tell Him what you want

# Jesus is on that mainline

# Tell Him what you want

# Jesus is on that mainline

# Tell Him what you want

# You can call Him up and tell Him what you want

# Well, the line ain't never busy

# You can tell Him what you want

# Well, that line ain't never busy

# You can tell Him what you want

# Well, the line ain't never busy

# You can tell Him what you want

# Keep on calling Him up

# And tell Him what you want

# Well Richard Nixon up in heaven

# Round the heavenly throne

# Angels come looking for Him

# Angels come looking for him

# Said you're wanted on the telephone

# A lot of people getting worried

# Down in Washington

# You'd better take this call

# And listen to what they want

# Now Richard Nixon's said - lookie here, I told you many times

# You ain't got Richard Nixon, just kick around no more

# If you don't like that orange hair faker

# Throw him out the door

# You'd better stand right up and tell him what you want

# Jesus is on the mainline tell Him what you want

# Jesus is on the mainline tell Him what you want

# Jesus is on the mainline tell him what you want

# You can call Him up

# And tell him what you want

# Jesus on the mainline

# Tell Him what you want

# Jesus on the mainline

# Tell Him what you want

# Jesus on the mainline

# You'd better tell him

# Tell Him what you want

# You'd better tell him

Thank you, folks, thank you so much.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It's now time for our final award of the evening.

For Folk Singer of the Year.

To present this award, a singer and song writer from Glasgow.

Her band, Texas, took their name from the 1984 Wim Wenders film,

Paris Texas, which was soundtracked by a certain Ry Cooder.

Please welcome leader Sharleen Spiteri.

Hi.

For me, as a songwriter and as a singer, we're all folk singers.

Anyone that sings about life, the talks that tell the stories

of love of loss of struggle, of anything, whether as a singer,

just telling that story to you, which then becomes your song,

it becomes your story.

It becomes the people you know, the smells you know,

the surroundings that you know and that is what a folk singer is.

The winner, well-deservedly is Kris Drever.

# If wishes were horses, beggars would ride #

Singing is a great pleasure for everybody

who does it.

Not necessarily a great pleasure for everybody who hears

everybody else's singing.

I am delighted and good night.

APPLAUSE

And so, we're nearing the end of the BBC Radio 2

Folk Awards for 2017.

We hope you've enjoyed this snapshot of the folk scene.

If you haven't, we're not really that bothered because we're nearly

finished and we're going to go for a drink.

Now, to play us out, someone who broke on to the folk

scene 16 years ago and has gone from strength-to-strength

as a singer, arranger and composure.

He's going to sing us a song from his excellent album Upcetera.

Backed by his Upcetera band and performing the traditional

ballad, Fair Margaret and Sweet William,

rapturous applause for Jim Moray.

Thank you and good night.

Hello.

# Sweet William rose on a May morning

# He's dressed himself in blue

# We want you to tell us of the love that's been

# Between Lady Margaret and you.

# Well I know nothing Lady Margaret's love

# And I know she don't love me

# But tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock

# Lady Margaret my bride shall see

# Lady Margaret was sitting in in a room, back combing her hair

# When who should she see but sweet William come a-riding there

# She first threw down her ivory comb

# Then back she threw hair.

# And you can suppose and be very well assured

# Lady Margaret was heard no more

# The day being past and the night coming on

# When most all men were asleep

# Something appeared to sweet William and his bride

# And stood at the their bed feet

# Saying - how do you like your bed making

# And how do you like your sheets

# And how do you like that new wedded bride

# That lies in your arms and sleeps

# Very well do I like my bed making

# Much better do I like my sheets

# But best of all is that gay lady

# That stands at my bed feet

# The night being past

# And the day coming on

# When most all men were awake

# Sweet William he said he was troubled in the head

# By the dreams that he dreamed last night

# Such dreams, such dreams cannot be true

# I'm afraid they're of no good

# I dreamed my chamber was full of wild swine

# And my bride's bed floating in blood

# He's called down his waiting men

# By one, by two, by three

# Saying go and ask leave of my new wedded

# If Lady Margaret I mayn't go and see

# He'd rode up to Lady Margaret's door

# And tingled all on the ring

# And who was so ready as her own born brother

# To rise and let him in

# Is Lady Margaret in her own bower room, or is she in her hall

# Or is she high in her chambery, amongst the ladies all

# Lady Margaret's not in her own bower room

# Nor neither is she in her hall

# But she's in her long cold coffin

# Lies pale against the wall

# Unroll, unroll the those winding sheets

# Although they're very fine

# And let me kiss them cold pale lips

# Just as often as they've kissed mine

# At first he's kissed her ivory cheeks

# And then he's kissed her chin

# And when he's kissed them cold pale lips

# There was no breadth within

# Lady Margaret died like it might be today

# Sweet William he died tomorrow

# Lady Margaret died for pure true love.

# Sweet William he died for sorrow #

Thank

Thank you

Thank you very

Thank you very much.