A major new folk music charity to promote Anglo-American folk music heritage.

Square Roots Productions is a UK-based charity whose objective is to curate events and projects that celebrate the folk music heritage shared by Britain and the United States: the people, the places, the history and the music itself. In so doing, it will help secure a vital musical legacy while at the same time nurturing a new generation of folk musicians.

For centuries music has criss-crossed the Atlantic, changed and enriched by each journey and reaching a creative peak in the 1950s and ‘60s. We are now approaching a critical juncture. In 2016, folk legends Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Martin Carthy all turn 75. They play on – but many equally influential contemporaries are now sadly neglected. These unsung folk musicians need urgently to be rediscovered, given a platform, in order that their legacy can be shared with today’s audience and preserved for future generations.

Concerts

Square Roots makes its public debut this spring with three concerts at Time Out ’s award-winning Green Note in Camden Town, London. Each focuses on a legacy musician or theme.

Looking ahead

Other events this year include a conference in the UK on the importance of journalism in launching the 1960s folk revivalists and, in the US, an exhibition and concert in partnership with New York State Arts.

The aim is to engage fully with the folk music community, old and young, across the country and Square Roots Productions welcomes suggestions and proposals, particularly for innovative regional activity.