- Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (born May 3, 1919), almost universally known as Pete Seeger, is a folk singer, political activist, and author. As a member of the Weavers, he had a string of hits, including a 1949 recording of Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" that topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. He was formerly a member of the Communist Party of the United States of America and a major contributor to folk and pioneer of protest music in the 1950s and the 1960s. - Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13 1941) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Simon is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, both as half of the folk-singing duo Simon and Garfunkel and as a solo artist. In 2006, "Time" magazine called him one of the "100 people who shape our world". He currently resides in New Canaan, Connecticut. - Richard Thompson
Richard John Thompson is a British musician, best known for his guitar playing and songwriting. As a guitarist Thompson is notable for the breadth of his influences — which range from Buddy Holly and James Burton via Les Paul and Django Reinhardt to less likely influences such as pipe player Billy Pigg — and for his penchant for improvising rather than relying on worked out solos for each song. - Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg (born December 20, 1957), known as Billy Bragg, is an English musician renowned for his blend of folk, punk-rock, and protest music, and his lyrics dealing with political as well as romantic themes. He has been active for over 20 years, and has collaborated with many other leading musicians, including Johnny Marr of The Smiths, protest folk singer Leon Rosselson, members of R.E.M., Michelle Shocked, Less Than Jake, Kirsty MacColl, … - Nick Drake
Nicholas Rodney Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician best known for his acoustic, autumnal songs. His primary instrument was the guitar, though he was also proficient at piano, clarinet, and saxophone. Although he failed to find a wide audience during his lifetime, Drake's work has since grown steadily in stature, to the extent that he is now widely considered one of the most influential English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years. - Seth Lakeman
Seth (Bernard) Lakeman is an English folk singer, songwriter, and musician from Yelverton, on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon. He was born on March 26, 1977. - John McCutcheon
Wisconsin native John McCutcheon (born August 14, 1952) is an American folk music singer and multi-instrumentalist who has produced over twenty-five albums since the 1970s. He is a graduate of Saint John's University in Minnesota, and now resides in Charlottesville, Virginia. While in his 20s, McCutcheon travelled to Appalachia and learned from some of the legendary greats of traditional folk music, such as Roscoe Holcomb, I.D. Stamper, and Tommy Hunter. - Bert Jansch
Herbert Jansch (born 3 November 1943), known as Bert Jansch, is a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and, in the 1960s, he was heavily influenced by the guitarist Davey Graham and folk singers such as Anne Briggs. He is best known as an innovative and accomplished acoustic guitarist but is also a singer and songwriter. - Eliza Carthy
Eliza Carthy (born August 23, 1975) in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing fiddle. She is the daughter of legendary English folk musicians singer/guitarist Martin Carthy and singer Norma Waterson. At the age of thirteen she formed the Waterdaughters with her mother, aunt (Lal Waterson) and cousin Maria Knight. She has subsequently worked with Nancy Kerr, with her parents as Waterson:Carthy, … - Mike Seeger
Mike Seeger (b. August 15 1933 in New York, New York) is an American folk musician and folklorist. He was exposed to traditional music through his mother and father, who worked with musicologists John and Alan Lomax. His famous musical family includes half-brother Pete Seeger and sister Peggy Seeger. He is an accomplished musician; a distinctive singer who plays autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar,mouth harp, mandolin, and dobro. - Greg Brown
Greg Brown is a folk musician from Iowa, USA. His "Iowa Waltz" has been (unsuccessfully) proposed to replace the state song of Iowa. - Dar Williams
Dar Williams (full name Dorothy Snowden Williams, born 1967) is an American singer-songwriter specializing in what can be described as "folk-pop". She is a frequent performer at folk festivals across the nation, such as the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in Hillsdale, New York. She has also toured with such artists as Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Griffin, Ani DiFranco, The Nields, Shawn Colvin, Girlyman, Joan Baez, and Catie Curtis. - Kate Rusby
Kate Rusby (born 1 December 1973) is a folk singer and songwriter from Barnsley, Yorkshire, England sometimes known as "The Barnsley Nightingale". She has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is regarded as one of the most famous English folk singers of contemporary times. - Stan Rogers
Stanley Allison Rogers (November 29, 1949 - June 2, 1983) was a Canadian folk musician and songwriter. Rogers was noted for his rich, baritone voice and his finely-crafted, traditional-sounding songs which were frequently inspired by Canadian history and the daily lives of working people, especially those from the fishing villages of the Maritime provinces and, later, the farms of the Canadian prairies. - Ewan Maccoll
Ewan MacColl (25 January, 1915 - 22 October, 1989) was a British folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was the father of Kirsty MacColl. - John Fahey
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as American Primitive, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of his art. Fahey himself borrowed from the folk and blues traditions of America but incorporated classical, Brazilian, Indian and abstract music into his eclectic oeuvre. - Sufjan Stevens
Sufjan Stevens (born July 1, 1975) is an American singer-songwriter and musician from Petoskey, Michigan. He is known for his lyrically focused and instrumentally rich songs that often relate to faith and family. Stevens has enjoyed wide critical success in the United States. He is considered part of the folk revival in indie pop, but his influences are very broad. His music has been likened to electronica and the minimalism of Steve Reich. - David Wilcox
David Patrick Wilcox (born 1958) is an American folk musician and singer-songwriter. Wilcox was born in Mentor, Ohio. He attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1976 where he started learning guitar. He later transferred to Warren Wilson College in North Carolina in 1981 and graduated in 1985. Within two years he had released his first album, and by 1989 he had signed with A&M Records, a major label. - Ellis Paul
Ellis Paul (born January 14, 1965) is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician. Born Paul Plissey in Aroostook County, Maine, Paul is a key figure in what has become known as the Boston school of songwriting, a literate, provocative and urbanely romantic folk-pop style that helped ignite the folk revival of the 1990s. His pop music songs have appeared in movies and on television, … - John Martyn
John Martyn (born Iain David McGeachy on September 11, 1948 in New Malden, Surrey, England) is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. - Dave Swarbrick
David Cyril Eric 'Dave' Swarbrick (born 5 April 1941 in New Malden) is an English folk musician. He plays violin, viola, mandolin, and guitar, and sings. - Kathryn Tickell
Kathryn Tickell (b. 1967) is an English player of the Northumbrian smallpipes and fiddle. She has recorded over a dozen albums, and toured widely. Kathryn Tickell took up the smallpipes aged nine, inspired by her family - especially her father Mike, who was heavily involved in the local traditional music scene - and by the music of an older generation of traditional musicians such as Willie Taylor, Will Atkinson, Joe Hutton, Richard Moscrop, Billy Pigg and Tom Hunter. - Lucy Kaplansky
Lucy Kaplansky (born 1960) is an American folk musician based in New York City. Kaplansky also has a PhD in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University. Kaplansky was originally from Chicago, but at the age of 18, decided not to go to college, and moved to New York City. She became involved in the city's folk music scene, particularly around Greenwich Village, where she played with, among others, Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin and Richard Shindell. - John Hartford
John Cowan Hartford (December 30 1937- June 4 2001) was an American folk, country and bluegrass composer and musician known for his mastery of the fiddle and banjo, as well as for his witty lyrics, unique vocal style, and extensive knowledge of Mississippi River lore. Hartford performed with a variety of ensembles throughout his career, and is perhaps best known for his solo performances where he would interchange the guitar, banjo, and fiddle from song to song. - Josh White
Joshua Daniel White, best known as Josh White, was a legendary American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. Today, he is widely remembered for his powerful and highly sensual stage presence, while some still remember that he almost single-handedly introduced Negro folk, blues, and gospel music to a world audience in the 1940s. - Jean Ritchie
Jean Ritchie (born December 8, 1922) is an American folk singer and Appalachian dulcimer player. - Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien (b. March 16 1954 in Wheeling, West Virginia) is an American bluegrass musician. O'Brien plays guitar, fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki and mandocello and is an accomplished vocalist. He moved to Boulder, Colorado in the 1970s and became part of the music scene there. In 1978, he founded the bluegrass group Hot Rize. Hot Rize had its own ofshoot band called Red Knuckles & The Trailblazers. The band would walk off stage, change clothes, … - Ashley Hutchings
Ashley Simon Hutchings (born January 26th 1945) is a British folk musician. Hutchings was born in Southgate, London, England but moved to Muswell Hill while still a child. He formed several groups, including "Dr K's Blues Band" in 1964. When he met guitarist Simon Nicol, they rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice. The house was called "Fairport" and lent its name to the group they formed together. - Chris Wood
Chris Wood is an English folk musician and composer who plays fiddle, viola and guitar, and sings. He is an ardent enthusiast for traditional English dance music (with a background in English church music), including Morris and other rituals and ceremonies, but his repertoire also includes much French folk music and traditional Québecois material. - Norma Waterson
Norma Christine Waterson, born August 15 1939, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire is an English musician, best-known as one of the original members of The Watersons, a premier English traditional group. Other members of the group included her brother Mike Waterson and sister Lal Waterson, and in later incarnatiosn of the group her husband Martin Carthy Her solo debut was produced by John Chelew and released by Hannibal Records in 1996, … - June Tabor
I have been a June Tabor fan since first hearing the Silly Sisters , and have heard her live several times. She has a stunning, deep, expressive voice. I prefer her traditional and more traditional-soundings songs to her contemporary pop-ish stuff, but will listen even to songs that aren't really to my taste for the wonder of her voice-she is a masterful interpreter of all kinds of songs. - Charles de Lint
Charles de Lint (born December 22, 1951) is a Canadian fantasy author and Celtic folk musician. It is often said that, along with Terri Windling, he established the genre of mythic fiction which falls somewhere between fantasy literature, and mainstream fiction with a magical realist bent. This is debatable, as John Crowley preceded de Lint with the novel "Little, Big", which was published in 1981, … - Bob Gibson
Samuel Robert ("Bob") Gibson was a folk singer who led a folk music revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was known for playing both the banjo and the 12-string guitar. He introduced Joan Baez at the Newport Folk Festival of 1959. He produced a number of LPs in the decade from 1956 to 1965. His best known album, "Gibson & Camp at the Gate of Horn", was released in 1961. His songs have been recorded by, among others, Peter, Paul and Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, … - Iris Dement
Iris DeMent (born January 5, 1961) is an American singer and songwriter. DeMent's musical style encompasses the genres country music and folk music. - Andy Irvine
Andrew Kennedy 'Andy' Irvine (born 14 June, 1942) is an Irish folk musician, singer, and songwriter, and a founding member of the popular band Planxty. He is an accomplished player of the mandolin, bouzouki, mandola and guitar-bouzouki. Andrew Irvine was born in St John's Wood, North London to Irish-Scots parents. His mother was an actress, and as a child Irvine made a few minor appearances on stage and in films, but he gave up acting when he reached adolescence. - Karine Polwart
Karine Polwart (born 1971) is a Scottish singer-songwriter. She writes and performs music with a strong folk and roots feel, her songs dealing with a variety of issues from alcoholism to genocide. She has been most recognised for her solo career, winning three awards at the BBC Folk Awards in 2005, and was previously been a member of Malinky and Battlefield Band. - Vashti Bunyan
Vashti Bunyan (born 1945) is an influential English singer-songwriter. Her 1970 debut LP, "Just Another Diamond Day", is considered an important album in the psych folk genre. Following the release of this LP, Bunyan disappeared from the music industry, until interest in her music was reignited with the psych folk revival of the early 2000s. - Chris Smither
Chris Smither (born November 11, 1944 in Miami, Florida) is an American folk/blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter. His music draws deeply from the blues, American folk music, modern poets and philosophers. His family lived in Ecuador and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas before settling in New Orleans when Chris was three-years old. He grew up in New Orleans, and lived briefly in Paris where he and his twin sister attended French public school. - Sam Bush
Sam Bush (b. April 13 1952 in Bowling Green, Kentucky) is an American mandolin player. As well as being an accomplished bluegrass vocalist, Bush also is a capable instrumentalist on guitar and fiddle. He was a founding member of the New Grass Revival and has been called a modern day Bill Monroe. Sam is one of the main attractions at the annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Telluride, Colorado. - John Kirkpatrick
John Kirkpatrick is an English player of free reed instruments.
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