The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology & the English Folk Revival

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Simon touched the hearts of millions of people through his music and infinite wisdom. His legacy remains with the amazing people he bought together and they will continue to create the magic of his music with his guidance from above. One of the most unusual collaborations of the past decade, The Imagined Village made a significant impression with their critically acclaimed and commercially successful début album. They toured extensively, appeared on TV's Later…With Jools show and won out at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. If the band had initially developed as a loose collective of singers and musicians, they have subsequently consolidated into a working, growing, organic aggregation. This stability in personnel is shiningly reflected in the brand new, follow-up album, which is also their first on the new record label ECC. Titled “Empire and Love”, it is released on 11 January 2010, a few days prior to a major UK tour that will include prestigious gigs at Scotland’s Celtic Connections Festival and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Alongside his love for music, Simon was also a very keen birder. Some of you may recall that he put together some inspiring guest mixes for Folk Radio in which he shared his deep love of nature. He came up with the title ‘Weirdy Birdy Mix’ for the first, on which we heard the twilight call of Great Northern Divers or the dry song of a Yellowhammer before being gently led away from the maddening crowd to join Swifts, Swallows and Cranes returning home along coastal paths, past childhood oaks and dream time Sky Larks. There will be plans of a tribute memorial concert later in the year and the details will be released on all platforms. FolkEast is well known for its record of ‘firsts’, and this year will be no exception. Saturday will see an exclusive festival performance of a new, all-star show, Saltlines, in which FolkEast has been a collaborator. It follows a tour of Saltlines in South West venues this July andsees Peter Knight’s ever-inventive Gigspanner Big Band– a firm favourite at FolkEast over the years – joining forces with best-selling author Raynor Winn in a show which mines traditional songs and tunes from the West Country and new words from Winn, inspired by the region .

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With few performances since 2012, a superb stroke of serendipity sees them returning to FolkEast for the festival’s milestone 10 th year – a real coup, with most of the original line-up intact. More personal were the keen twitcher’s mixes of music and field recordings of birdsong that he made for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and it’s perhaps his love of nature that provides a clue to his career-defining conviction that all music, whatever its origin and style, was interconnected and compatible. It explains, at least, the pan-global approach he took with Afro Celt Sound System, which he formed in 1995. He was still receiving a student grant when he co-founded the jazz-influenced Weekend, so decided to change his professional name. As Simon Booth he played guitar on Weekend’s La Varieté (1982), on which Alison Statton’s bossa-influenced vocals were matched against jazz players including Annie Whitehead on trombone and Larry Stabbins on saxophone. Live at Ronnie Scott’s (1983) featured the jazz pianist Keith Tippett. Charlie Moores and Magnus Robb – Red Deer Rutting (podcast extract – music Polar Drift, Simon Emmerson and Simon ‘Palmskin Richmond)

Charlie Moores and Magnus Robb– Red Deer Rutting (podcast extract – music Polar Drift, Simon Emmerson and Simon ‘Palmskin Richmond) He is survived by his partner Karen Murphy and their children, Ted and Josie, and by his mother and his brother, Paul.

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The song was originally a fairly full-on electronic arrangement with a Drum and Bass feel. AG insisted on trying out a lighter, gentler feel for the drums, and this approach of using the programmed beats to inspire and eventually be replaced by live performance became a kind of template for the album. Also previously announced for England’s most easterly festival are fast-rising singer songwriter Katherine Priddy, Spiers and Boden, the effervescent Sam Kelly & The Lost Boysand Anglo-French five-piece Topette!! whose latest album we reviewed here. FolkEast is also keen to nurture young talent, and this year sees a Sunday performance by the National Youth Folk Ensemble and the introduction of a Youth Moot programme, curated by young Suffolk musician Finn Collinson who will also perform with his band on Sunday afternoon. The Imagined Village have become a lot better by becoming more ­conventional. When they started out, playing in a large tent in the mudbath that was ­Womad 2007, they were ­almost ­frantically ­experimental in their ­attempts to ­reinterpret ­traditional songs for a ­multicultural, 21st-­century Britain. ­Under the ­guidance of ­Simon ­Emmerson, of Afro Celt Sound ­System fame, they mixed music with ­multimedia effects, telling the story of ­traditional Sussex singers the ­Copper Family through clips on a screen ­behind the stage, and making use of ­programmed beats and electric bass.

Afro Celt Sound System before their performance at the Celtic Connections festival, Glasgow, in 2016: from left, Simon Emmerson, N’Faly Kouyaté, Griogair Labhruidh and Johnny Kalsi. Photograph: Judith Burrows/Getty ImagesThe Youth Moot, open to 11-17-year-olds, will include workshops and more in a new space at FolkEast. Engineer [Main Recording Engineers] – Mass, Oliver Knight, Paul Grady, Richard Evans (3), Simon Richmond Simon Emmerson, the founder of Afro Celt Sound System, core founder of The Imagined Village, record producer, guitarist, bird watcher and Honorary Bard, passed away on Monday, 13th March. Tom Moore and Archie Moss, widely regarded as two of the best players and innovators in traditional folk, will be heading to Suffolk as well as Solana, a five-piece from Bristol, Whitby’s Richard Grainger and Bristol-based singer–songwriter Reema.

Then, after recording Bending The Dark in 2012, they took an unexpectedly lengthy break, from which they have at last thankfully returned. It’s a record that, in the time-honoured way of folk, is about sex and death,’ says Simon,’ but it’s also about honouring England’s own distinctive traditions.’ Across their nine albums, Emmerson sugared the ensemble’s core line-up with the likes of Iarla Ó Lionáird, Martin Hayes, Davey Spillane, Moussa Sissokho, Johnny Kalsi and Ayub Ogada. The result situated Irish traditional music within a wider, international context, one that deliriously embraced the old and the new. Their 2017 album, The Source, earned them recognition as Best Group in that year’s Songlines Music Awards. We continued regardless with the recording, revising and refining a body of over 20 potential songs. The rhythm section was ready to record in the Strong Room studios, London in October 2011 and January 2012 with our new engineer Paul Grady, from Doncaster, who completed the project as the mixing engineer. Members of the Saltlines collective will also be involved elsewhere at the festival – John Spiers will take up his regular seat on FolkEast’s Gardeners’ Cornered panel (FolkEast’s answer to Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time), where audience members can discuss their plant issues (!) while BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Best Duo winners Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin (Edgelarks) will be performing their own set.There are some beautiful field recordings from The Sound Approach, the first featuring pro-wildlife campaigner/podcaster Charlie Moores talking about the loss of wild meadows. In the accompanying soundscape, you can hear endangered bird species you now rarely hear, such as the turtle dove, quails and corncrakes. Simon says, “these were the types of birds I would have heard as a kid when I went out camping but have now disappeared”. Charlie makes several appearances in the mix, and there are some incredible field recordings by Magnus Robb (The Sound Approach, Northern Flyway). The band went on to become festival and concert hall favourites. After appearing at Womadelaide (the Womad festival in Adelaide) that year, Simon said “those first Australian gigs were the point where we realised the band had very global appeal”. It’s with a heavy heart that we announce on Monday, 13th March, the peaceful passing of our dear Simon Emmerson, after a prolonged illness.