Mercury Prize-nominated folk singer, conservationist, song collector and activist, Sam Lee, plays a unique role in the British music scene, breaking boundaries between traditional and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated. Sam's voice has helped challenge what old songs hold for us today. 

His latest critically acclaimed album Songdreaming comes out today, of which Sam has said:

“I wanted to sing a vision of what a conversation between us and the land could be, to restore and inspire a practice of songful immersion in nature that brings with it healing, something we need now more than ever."

Sam’s debut novel The Nightingale, notes on a songbird richly captivates these highly endangered birds and their place in culture, folklore, music and literature throughout the millennia. 

Sam is the founder of The Nest Collective, holding vibrant annual gatherings including a diverse range of music events across the UK, featuring outstanding emerging and established folk, world and roots artists from around the globe.  Perhaps most notable are his Singing With Nightingales gatherings in spring, where you can step silently into the night and listen as the finest musicians in the land duet with the sweet song of the ever more endangered nightingale.  

Sam's also a regular radio and TV broadcaster, film soundtrack composer and has provided songs for several major feature films. As a change-maker in the music industry, he is a co-founder of Music Declares Emergency, FAC board member and the pioneering artist to work with leading environmental charity Earthpercent to whom a portion of proceeds of the current album will be donated.

If you’d like to learn more about our work at Rooted Healing, you can head to rootedhealing.org and join us at our ceremonial nature-led gatherings or online courses in animistic deep ecology.  We have a very special gathering coming up this summer in Eryri, North Wales, called Ancestral, where you can join us and embody ancestral village life, full of songs, ancient stories, craft and ceremonies, all to bring us closer to our early ancestors and our role for the next generations to come, to the land and to our more-than-human kin. 

The music in this episode is from Sam Lee and Bonnie Medicine.

Support the show