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Sam Lee (Folk Music, 2011)

Sam Lee

Fellow in 2011 for Folk Music

In many ways the Award has allowed me to gestate for the year and develop as an artist in ways I wouldn't have had the creative space for had the finances not been available.

Read Sam Lee's testimonial

Sam Lee is a British folk singer and environmentalist. His debut album, Ground of its Own was shortlisted for the 2012 Mercury Music Award. He is a highly inventive and original singer, folk song interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and successful creator of live events.

Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, Sam has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between folk and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated. Sam has helped develop its ecosystem, inviting in a new listenership interrogating what the messages in these old songs hold for us today.

With his latest critically acclaimed album, Old Wow, he’s summonsed up a truly compelling and emotional album that takes his work to yet another level.

Likewise in 2021, Sam releases his debut novel ‘The Nightingale, notes on a songbird’ telling the epic tale of this highly endangered bird and their place in culture folklore, folksong, music and literature throughout the millennia.