Jackie Oates

What attracts people to English folk music is never just one thing.

There is the tradition – a taking and passing on of the people’s music. And there’s an otherness – the way a singer uniquely inhabits a song while echoes of its past remain. These are haunted tunes. That delicate balance between then and now, respect and reinvention, tradition and otherness has made Jackie Oates a name synonymous with the thrillingly rude health of English folk music in the 21st century.

A folk festival child, Jackie had the luxury of growing up surrounded by the music she plays. That unfair advantage meant she started her career as a finalist in the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Awards. She went on to win the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Horizon prize in 2009, and take home a statue for Best Traditional Track on the same night.

Jackie began recording as a member of Rachel Unthank & The Winterset (now known as The Unthanks). Her plaintive viola and voice helped define the dark Northumbrian sound that won them Mojo Magazine’s Folk Album Of The Year in 2005.

As a solo artist Jackie Oates has surprised and beguiled critics and fans with each album; never repeating an idea or sticking to the safety of a formula. Yet at all times being unmistakably her.