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Description
The Second British Folk Revival was a mid-20th-century resurgence of interest in traditional song and dance music of the British Isles. Emerging in the years after World War II, it drew on field-collecting, scholarship, and a growing network of folk clubs to bring ballads, sea songs, and dance tunes back into contemporary performance.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the movement broadened from unaccompanied singing and acoustic ensembles to "electric folk" (or British folk rock), as bands adapted traditional repertoire with drum kits and amplified instruments. Its peak arrived in the early-to-mid 1970s, after which its mainstream visibility faded, though the repertoire, techniques, and community structures it fostered have remained foundational for later folk, singer-songwriter, and indie-folk scenes.
History
After WWII, collectors, scholars, and performers such as Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd worked to document and reactivate traditional English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish repertoires. BBC radio programming and the presence of American folklorists (e.g., Alan Lomax’s UK period) helped to catalyze interest. In parallel, the skiffle boom introduced many young musicians to roots idioms and DIY performance.
A national network of folk clubs formed, providing stages where unaccompanied harmony groups (e.g., The Watersons) and solo singer-guitarists (e.g., Martin Carthy, Shirley Collins) flourished. Topic Records and similar labels disseminated both archival and new recordings, and the culture of floor-singing, session-playing, and repertoire-sharing embedded the music in everyday social life.
From 1969 onward, bands including Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span pioneered British folk rock, adapting ballads and dance tunes with drum kit, electric bass, and amplified guitars and fiddles. Pentangle bridged jazz, blues, and early music with traditional songcraft, while psych-folk currents (e.g., The Incredible String Band) broadened the idiom’s horizons. The style reached its widest audience in the early-to-mid 1970s.
By the late 1970s, punk, new wave, and other currents captured mainstream attention, and the revival’s wider cultural relevance waned. Yet its infrastructure—festivals, clubs, labels, and archives—endured, and its practices flowed into Celtic rock, indie folk, and later "wyrd" and psych-folk scenes.
The Second British Folk Revival permanently reshaped the performance of traditional song: it normalized singing in local accents, revived modal accompaniment and fingerstyle techniques, and established a living repertoire and community model that continues to inform contemporary folk, singer-songwriter, and experimental acoustic work.
