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The Imagined Village is a folk music project founded by Simon Emmerson of Afro Celt Sound System. It is intended to produce modern folk music that represented modern multiculturalism in the United Kingdom and as such, featured musicians from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The name of the project came from the 1993 book The Imagined Village by Georgina Boyes.
The project started in 2004, and led to the release of an eponymous album in 2007 by a collective of artists on Real World Records. Some of the tracks on it are modern re-interpretations of traditional folk songs. Benjamin Zephaniah was awarded Best Original Song in the Hancocks 2008, Talkawhile Awards for Folk Music (as voted by members of Talkawhile.co.uk) for "Tam Lyn Retold". He collected the award at The Cambridge Folk Festival on 2 August 2008.
The Imagined Village E.P. was released earlier in 2007, and is a remix of the album tracks. The 2008 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards voted "Cold, Hailey, Rainy Night" as best traditional track.
In 2009, the project moved to a new record label, ECC Records, and a second album, Empire & Love was released in January 2010, followed by Bending the Dark in May 2012.
A revised lineup was announced for their 2010 tour, coinciding with the release of Empire & Love: Martin Carthy, Eliza Carthy, and Chris Wood, backed by a band featuring Simon Emmerson, Johnny Kalsi, Ali Friend, Andy Gangadeen, Simon Richmond, Sheema Mukherjee and Barney Morse Brown.
In 2011 Jackie Oates replaced Chris Wood for their live performances including at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival. The musicians credited on Bending the Dark (2012) were Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Simon Emmerson, Ali Friend, Andy Gangadeen, Johnny Kalsi, Sheema Mukherjee, Barney Morse Brown, Jackie Oates and Simon Richmond.
References
Boyes, Georgina (2010). The Imagined Village: Culture, ideology and the English Folk Revival. London: No Masters Cooperative Limited. ISBN978-0-9566227-0-9.
The Imagined Village playing in 2010
