Queer folk musicians take the spotlight in new trans-led collaborative EP

Natalie Brookes, a Northampton-based trans folk musician and composer, is launching a new EP centred around promoting queer musicians on the folk music scene. Nathalie, who is the band leader for Ceilidh Band The Rainbow Folk, is collaborating with six other queer folk musicians as part of the new project; Correspondence: A Little Collection of Queer Tunes.

Nat Brookes - Correspondence - Queer Folk Ceilidh at Sidmouth Folk Festival. Credit: Catherine Gough

A press release about the project explains that, “The EP will reflect the diversity of the queer community through the musical diversity of contributions from different queer musicians. The artwork for the EP will also be created by a queer artist, reflecting the themes of collaboration, conversation and the queer experience.”

The Correspondence project will see each of the six musicians compose a new tune in the folk genre, and Natalie will compose a companion tune to form a pair. These pairs of tunes will be recorded as duets to form the EP.

“This project comes at a pivotal moment for queer people in the folk scene. Historically the folk music scene has not always been a safe space for queer people, but recently there has been a drive for greater inclusion that Natalie has been at the forefront of. She was a founding member of QOFF: The Queer Online Folk Festival which brought together queer people on the folk scene during lockdown. This festival was one of the first folk events specifically aimed at queer people that we know of in the UK.

“Since then she has joined forces with the project Queer Folk UK to lead the band for a series of highly successful Queer Ceilidh Dance Party events at the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in Camden. These events regularly attract over 200 dancers, many of whom are discovering folk music and dance for the first time through the safe space that the events have created.

“Despite being an instrumental musician rather than a songwriter, Natalie uses every opportunity to share powerful messages about issues faced by the queer and particularly the trans+ community. As a response to the recent Supreme Court ruling she Natalie constructed a backdrop for the Queer Ceilidh band made up of 27 trans pride protest placards, each with a different message. The band recently displayed this backdrop at a ceilidh they performed for at Sidmouth Folk Festival, one of the largest folk events in England.”

To fund the project Natalie has launched a Kickstarter to cover key costs and make sure that the queer talent involved are paid fairly.