WOMAD

Jim Moray

From United Kingdom

English folk music's young radical
"If folk song is the music of the people, then it's surely wrong to treat it as 'high art' that should be preserved unchanged. Folk music is low culture." Jim Moray has always caused a stir. When he first appeared on the folk music radar eight or so years back as a self-styled 'techno-traditionalist', he got the goat of the scene's more conservative elements. But then the records began to match the hyperbole - 2003's Sweet England was described by Uncut as "the most significant new development in English folk music since Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief", while last year's Low Culture scooped the uber-prestigious Album Of The Year gong in folk bible fRoots. But it's never radicalism for radicalism's sake. Jim picks his moves carefully, updating the tradition with restraint, whether it's transforming XTC's All The Pretty Girls into a multi-voiced sea shanty or delivering the first folk/grime crossover in Lucy Wan.
(Biography by Nige Tassell- 2009)