Jan 23, 2020
If you’ve been listening all the way to the end of each episode, you’ll know that each story ends with a song. That song is performed by a contemporary artist, paying homage to an old-time tune. In this bonus edition of The Folk, you’ll hear an all-musical episode of songs featured in the series, including some...
Jan 16, 2020
If you’re from Prince Edward Island, or you've ever heard a song sung on the island, chances are you’ve heard a song by Larry Gorman, who penned hundreds of songs in the mid-1800s. Once in a while a folk songwriter will write a tune that makes it into oral tradition. It becomes so popular that it’s passed down...
Jan 2, 2020
A folklorist or a folk song collector is a person who studies folk music, and records and releases collections of folk songs. There is no folklorist more associated with Canada than Edith Fowke. Able to sell the world a vision on the meaning of “Canadian folk music,” her body of work supersedes others in the...
Dec 19, 2019
In the 1940s and ‘50s in the interior of British Columbia, a logger and mandolin player quietly and humbly amassed one of the largest repertoires of mandolin tunes from the province. Somehow, this unknown woodsman with a rough mandolin style ended up recording and releasing an album with the Folkways record label, the...
Dec 12, 2019
Charlie Panigoniak, much like the raven in Inuit stories, was a jokester. The Nunavut country-folk legend, who passed away earlier in 2019, soared to ‘territorial’ heights starting in the 1970s as a beloved entertainer and storyteller that shared the Inuit lifestyle through his often-humorous songs. Despite being a...