IT HAS been another good year for fans of folk music with interesting albums from some newer artists as well as veteran performers often with specific themes.

The Rosie Hood Band explored themes of nature and struggles for women’s rights in A Seed of Gold, including a stirring version of Bread and Roses. Honey and the Bear’s Away Beyond the Fret looked at the history of their home county of Suffolk and famous residents like Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.

The history of struggle in the Highland Clearances is also told by Mairead Green and Rachel Newton in Anna Bhan.

A combination of Northumberland folk duo The Brothers Gillespsie, classical group Trio Mythos and polyphonic Occitan vocal group Que Li Siam, produced an intriguing album Hirondelle with a fusion of different musical styles but paying tribute to anti-fracking campaigners in the process.

The coming-together of Norfolk-based duo Christina Alden and Alex Patterson with the Shackleton Trio to form Kitewing also saw an impressive album exploring environmental themes which were also dealt with by Harbottle and Jonas in Wild Goose.

There were many albums exploring different themes in terms of history and struggles fought. The album Flowers by the all-female folk trio Odette Michell, Karen Pfeiffer and Daria Kulesh gives us new versions of classic songs like The Peatbog Soldiers, Bella Ciao and Where Have All the Flowers Gone sung in combinations of English, German and Russian, reflecting the trio’s diverse backgrounds and a commitment to peace.

There was an interesting blend of folk, Americana and country in Strange News Has Come to Town by Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds. Started before lockdown, the album also looks at current trials and tribulations.

Grace Will Lead Me Home by Angeline Morrison, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne and Jon Bickley commemorates the 250th anniversary of the writing of the song Amazing Grace and past and present struggles against racism.

Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne also released his own very enjoyable album Play Up The Music! looking at how English folk songs have travelled over to become part of the Caribbean and black American musical repertoire.

Tarren’s album Outside Time brings together traditional songs with new songs emphasising themes of togetherness and community as well as reworking themes of gender non-conformity in the folk tradition with the song Neither Maid nor Man.

Reinterpretations of traditional folk songs are present in Newfoundland-based folk group Rum Ragged’s album Gone Jiggin’ showing the Scottish and Irish influences in their home tradition and Jon Boden and the Remnant Kings do good piano-based versions of traditional folk songs in Parlour Ballads.  

The Rheingans Sisters also explore the collective movement in folk music and women staying strong and free in Start Close In.

Finally, if you like the good old union song tradition in folk music you can’t do better than listen to Si Kahn and George Mann’s Labor Day: A Tribute to Hard Working People Everywhere launched to celebrate Si Kahn’s 80th birthday. With numerous guest artists, this celebrates an American singer-songwriter fully in the Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger tradition. Solidarity forever.