Sam Lee

The final day at WOMAD was mostly dry and mostly mellow!

My main musical priority was to see the magnificent Sam Lee and he didn't disappoint!

I've been a fan of the traditional songs of these isles since I was a teenager and I love it when someone comes along and does something new with this endlessly adaptable music. I say 'new' but in some ways what Lee's doing is actually a return to what people such as Francis Child and Cecil Sharp did back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - going out and collecting songs from communities which have passed them down from generation to generation and giving them a wider audience. Whilst many singers since the folk revival of the 1950s/1960s have been content to re-work and re-interpret the body of songs collected by people like Sharp there have been few in recent years who have made the effort to go out to often marginalised communities, build their trust and learn their songs. I don't think anyone has done such a fine job of it since Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins collected songs in the southern states of the USA back in 1959 - although others may correct me!

Sam Lee doesn't come from a typical 'folk' background. In the past he's earned his living as a burlesque dancer, a wilderness survival trainer and a visual artist and had no connection with the folk scene but he's found his spiritual home in folk music and has spent time living with and learning from the Travelling people - Scottish, Irish and Romany travellers who still preserve an oral tradition of handing songs down through the years.

What he's done with the music he's learned is extraordinary. Deeply respectful of the tradition but confident enough to bring his own artistic sensibilities to the party!

Please have a look at the brilliant video for his rendition of The Ballad of George Collins and you'll get an idea of exactly how cool Sam Lee is! This is a terrific song about the perils of venereal disease and the choreography in the video is marvellous - as is his arrangement of the tune. He calls it "disco folk" but whatever it is it's enchanting. It starts slowly but it builds - so stick with it!

I'd also like to say some words in praise of the fabulous Bookshop Band (Bath-based blippers will probably be aware of them!) - if ever a band were designed to appeal to a Folkie Booknerd, it's them! They were loveliness itself!