Today, my guest is one of the most respected figures in the world of Northumberland folk music – the traditional singer David McCracken.
David farms sheep and cattle on the hills above the North Tyne valley. He draws on a lifetime’s experience of making music with his family and community to create his own songs about rural life in the Borders and beyond. He composes entirely in his head and writes nothing down, learning and passing on songs through the oral tradition and performing in local shows, pubs and folk sessions. There are almost no publicly available recordings of his singing. David says he has hundreds of songs in his head and he recorded three of them for this episode.
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