The Voices of Annie Briggs
Listen now
Description
An intimate portrait of the iconic but elusive English folksinger Annie Briggs. Annie Briggs was a leading figure in the English folk revival of the early 1960's, inspiring Bert Jansch (famously, in Blackwater Side), Sandy Denny, The Watersons and many more. But she was a restless spirit, travelling through the British Isles and Ireland, finding songs and living close to the earth. As Sandy Denny depicted her in The Pond and the Stream: 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'. In this programme, she talks to Alan Hall about childhood holidays singing along with the waves, writing songs while living on a beach in west Ireland, her garden and the wildlife that she shares it with, and the ballad tradition she discovered as a teenager and that she "belongs to". Produced by Alan Hall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
More Episodes
For a man whose musical demeanour comes across as rough-hewn with a potency that's barely contained, Richard Dawson in person is gentle with a soft smile and opinions that are precisely worded though almost tentatively shared. He admits to a high level of everyday anxiety, yet has left a mark on...
Published 07/29/19
Published 07/29/19
Growing up in Wolverhampton, Steph Phillips was a quiet girl, shy to the point of wanting to vanish during social occasions and conscious that as a black teenage female she was, anyway, invisible to most of society. These days, she's found her voice in a space where she can be what she describes...
Published 07/22/19