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BBC Radio 2 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Light Programme.

BBC Radio 2

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The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe

Music: Folk

Mark Radcliffe explores the wide range of folk and acoustic music from around the world.

Mark Radcliffe explores the wide range of traditional and contemporary folk and acoustic music from around the UK and the world, with regular interviews and live sessions.

The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe: The New Radio Ballads

The New Radio Ballads

05/11/2014

BBC Radio 2 - The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe, The New Radio Ballads

John Tams talks about series The Ballads of the Great War, which focuses on World War I.

Mark Radcliffe presents an hour of the best folk and acoustic music, and songwriter John Tams talks about new series The Ballads of the Great War, which focuses on World War I.

An hour of the best folk and acoustic music from Britain and beyond.

This week, the songwriter John Tams talks about Radio 2's new series of Radio Ballads, The Ballads of the Great War.

Created in 1958 by radio producer Charles Parker and the legendary folk musicians Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, radio ballads are self-narrating documentaries that use the voices of real people to tell a story first-hand. Original folk songs based on the words of the contributors are woven around the speech.

The Ballads Of The Great War are hard-hitting but lyrical accounts of life and death on the Western Front in words and music. Featuring eye-witness accounts from veterans and 50 specially commissioned new songs by the cream of British folk songwriters, each ballad tells the story of the war in the words of the people who fought it.

The five programmes in this new BBC Radio 2 series, broadcast over five years, offer a unique opportunity to experience the war at first hand, through the eyes of those who were there. The first ballad covers the outbreak of the war in 1914 and the early battles, with troops taken to the front in London buses and taxis, women handing out white feathers and hopes for a short war soon dashed. 

John Tams, Julie Matthews, Jez Lowe, Billy Bragg, Sean Cooney and The Unthanks are among the folk artists providing the musical landscape for the upcoming series.

Amazing music. Played by an amazing line up.

Radio 2: Amazing music. Played by an amazing line-up. The home of great music, entertainment and documentaries

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