麻豆约拍

An hour of the best folk and acoustic music from Britain and beyond.

This week, the songwriter John Tams talks about Radio 2's new series of Radio Ballads, The Ballads of the Great War.

Created in 1958 by radio producer Charles Parker and the legendary folk musicians Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, radio ballads are self-narrating documentaries that use the voices of real people to tell a story first-hand. Original folk songs based on the words of the contributors are woven around the speech.

The Ballads Of The Great War are hard-hitting but lyrical accounts of life and death on the Western Front in words and music. Featuring eye-witness accounts from veterans and 50 specially commissioned new songs by the cream of British folk songwriters, each ballad tells the story of the war in the words of the people who fought it.

The five programmes in this new 麻豆约拍 Radio 2 series, broadcast over five years, offer a unique opportunity to experience the war at first hand, through the eyes of those who were there. The first ballad covers the outbreak of the war in 1914 and the early battles, with troops taken to the front in London buses and taxis, women handing out white feathers and hopes for a short war soon dashed.

John Tams, Julie Matthews, Jez Lowe, Billy Bragg, Sean Cooney and The Unthanks are among the folk artists providing the musical landscape for the upcoming series.