Telling Tales

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Radio 4 Extra celebrates the best in storytelling. Different voices and different genres.

BBC Radio 4 Extra celebrates the very best in storytelling, showcasing different voices, and different genres, from the BBC archives and beyond.

Telling Tales: Karine Polwart

Karine Polwart

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Telling Tales, Karine Polwart

Exploring storytelling in song with the musician and writer Karine Polwart.

Exploring the art of storytelling in song, with the award-winning musician and writer Karine Polwart.

An exploration of the art of storytelling in song, with the musician and writer Karine Polwart.

Karine has won six BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, including 2018 Folk Singer of The Year.  Her seventh album, Laws Of Motion, was released in October, with songs spanning moments from history and her own life. 

One song, which she first performed at Celtic Connections in 2017, addresses Donald Trump from the point of view of the ancient, metamorphic rock lying beneath the Isle Of Lewis.  

In 2016, Karine wrote, musically directed, and performed in Wind Resistance, a critically acclaimed theatrical meditation on midwifery, ecology, sanctuary, and solidarity.

Karine’s radio work, meanwhile, includes several compositions for the BBC’s ground-breaking Radio Ballads series, which marked the centenary of the end of the First World War - as we feature  Hospitals broadcast on Radio 2 as part of The Ballad Of The Great War: 1917.

We also revisit an essay Karine delivered on BBC Radio 3, My Life In Music: Craigie Hill, which reflects on family, loss, memory and the power of a good song.

Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra and first broadcast in March 2019.

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