Kate Rusby (England)
Kate Rusby grew up in Barnsley, in the north of England, and has spent more than three decades singing traditional English ballads alongside her own songs. Across 23 albums she has moved between folk tradition, original songwriting, and reinterpretations of other artists’ material, and her covers album Hand Me Down (2020) became her highest-charting record, reaching the UK top 12. She was the Mercury Prize winner in 1999, something almost unheard of for a folk artist, has won several BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s Gold Badge, received three honorary doctorates for her work preserving folk song, and collaborated with Paul Weller, Alison Krauss, and Ronan Keating.
Featured Song:
“Holly & the Ivy @ 20” draws on midwinter customs older than Christianity, when evergreens brought indoors promised that life would return in spring. The carol recasts the holly’s blossom, berry, prickle, and bark as images from the Nativity story. Its words circulated on English broadsides by the early 1700s, and the tune most people know was collected by Cecil Sharp in Gloucestershire in 1909.This version, one of several she has recorded, pares the song back to her voice and Damien O’Kane’s guitar.
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