What makes a folk Song? Who decides? Who sets the rules? Who specifies the instruments? It is the oldest form of human expression, predating cave art, maybe even speech itself yet often it is now locked in a bell jar and labelled of a time and a place.

For The Long Road, folk music is simply the extraordinary stories of ordinary folk. It is alive and well, practiced all over the world, expressing the personal, close-to, experience of the writer and performer. Through craft, inspiration, a deep feeling for the raw materials used and commitment to the authentic and the real. Hence ‘artisan’. It is the antithesis of the programmed, digitised, big brother music that is the mainstream.

They are committed members of the global brother and sisterhood carrying on the peripatetic tradition of the troubadour. Often unrecognised, sometimes not even aware of each other, they press on from the front line of life, singing how it is.

Filmed and edited by Kat Hodgkinson and Gemma Caldwell.

Recorded at Woodworm Studios, Banbury. Engineer: Stuart Jones.

Supported by Arts Council England.