Folk Bands and Artists
The Imagined Village
https://realworldrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-imagined-village
The most ambitious folk fusion band of the 21st century, The Imagined Village set out to match English traditional songs against the sounds of contemporary multi-cultural England, with influences from Asia, the Caribbean and elsewhere. And they did so with an extraordinary line-up that included folk celebrities Eliza Carthy and Martin Carthy, Simon Emmerson (of Afro-Celt Sound System fame), sitar exponent Sheema Mujherjee, that rousing dhol and tabla percussionist Johnny Kalsi, and drummer Andy Gangadeen. They recorded three albums, played at major festivals from Glastonbury to Cambridge, headlined at concert halls and appeared on Later…With Jools Holland, performing a stomping, percussive re-working of Cold Haily Rainy Night (the song that won them Best Traditional Track at the 2008 BBC Folk Awards). Then, after recording Bending The Dark in 2012, they took an unexpectedly lengthy break, from which they have at last thankfully returned.
