Recently hailed as one of MOJO's 'voices taking folk into the future', Angeline Morrison is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter whose work combines a deep love of traditional song, a deep respect for the hidden ancestral voices of Old Albion, and a strong belief in magic and enchantment as powerful charms for decoloniality. 

 

Angeline mostly makes music in the genres of wyrd folk and psych folk.  Her songs have a feral approach, a handmade sonic aesthetic (found sounds, homemade instruments) and a belief in the importance of tenderness.  Angeline’s original compositions and re-stitchings of traditional songs focus on storytelling and the small things that often go unnoticed. Elements of soul music, literature, 60s beat pop sounds, folklore, myth and the supernatural infuse her work.  Sounds like solitude, memory, nostalgia, a rainy walk amongst trees…

In July 2022, Angeline was announced as the fourth winner of the prestigious Christian Raphael Prize at Cambridge Folk Festival, which generously supports the development of emerging talent in the folk genre. In May 2022, trad album The Brown Girl and Other Folk Songs was voted The Guardian's Folk Album of the Month.  In December 2022 The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience was voted No 1 Folk album of the year in The Guardian. 

​

Angeline played the acoustic stage at Glastonbury in 2022 and also appeared on BBC2's Later With Jools Holland during Black History Month 2022, singing Unknown African Boy (d.1830). This song tells the true story of an enslaved child who died in a ship wreck off the Isles of Scilly. 

You can hear Angeline as part of alt-folk duo We Are Muffy with Nick Duffy (of The Lilac Time), and psych-folk duo Rowan : Morrison with The Rowan Amber Mill.

The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience (released October 2022, Topic Records) is a work of re-storying. The historic Black presence in Britain dates back to at least Roman times, yet is often hidden, forgotten or  unacknowledged.  Our Black British ancestors have no surviving body of folk song that speaks to their lives and experiences. The Sorrow Songs begins to address this. It is a gift to the forgotten Black ancestors of these islands, and to the folk community here today. The album uses history and imagination to tell stories of the Black ancestors of Old Albion, in the sonic style of traditional and folk music.

The generous support of Arts Council England, Help Musicians UK & The English Folk Dance and Song Society is gratefully acknowledged here, for The Sorrow Songs album, research and tour.