Five minutes with… Jacken Elswyth
English Dance and Song December 2025
This news item is based on articles in English Dance and Song, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance, EDS was first published in 1936 and is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts.
Five minutes with… Jacken Elswyth
We catch up with the experimental/trad banjo player, label owner, Shovel Dance Collective member and denizen of London's new folk clubs – and discover what inspired her musical journey. Interview by Sammie Squire.
How did you find folk music?
I suppose folk music is something I was brought up with – as one genre among many, a set of styles and conventions. In my late teens I started to be interested in the idea that (some of) this music is also ‘traditional’ in some way, and to seek out examples of it that expressed this traditionality. I remember buying a Phoebe Smith CD as part of that search. I think what I was looking for was musical strangeness. The broader folk genre revealed itself to be a product of the way, that various localised styles were adapted in conversation with conventions drawn from much more mainstream pop and rock (a melding that I still love). But where I could find them, examples of those localised and historical styles abounded with, to my young ears, a weirdness that was alluring alien-like those long, slow renditions of ballads on the Phoebe Smith CD.
What appealed to you about the banjo?
The fifth string. That slightly haunting high drone that you get singing through banjo melodies. In the same way that the strangeness of music that sounded ‘traditional’ held an attraction for me, the way the banjo and its associated styles incorporated drone elements, felt very different and appealing.
How would you describe your music style?
I think of myself as a kind of folk musician. I play banjo, I draw from traditional repertoires, and I explore traditional playing techniques – clawhammer, two-finger picking etc. But if all musicians playing folk are also in conservation with other musical styles (music hall to rock’n’roll to punk and more) then the stuff that I want to be in conversation with runs towards the avant-garde – free improvisation, DIY scenes, noisy and messy stuff.
Who are your biggest musical influences?
Obviously, a lot of banjo players – Roscoe Holcomb, Hedy West, Frank Fairfield, Joseph Decosimo. And non-folk musicians approaching their instruments systematically while developing improvisational styles – Derek Bailey, Rhodri Davis, Bill Orcutt, Joëlle Leandre. And musicians exploring traditional repertoires and techniques but taking them in similar directions to the ones that I'm drawn in – Mike Gangloff, Brighde Chaimbeul, Quinie, Weston Olencki.
How did the Shovel Dance Collective come together? And what are you looking for in traditional song?
The core group initially came about through the coalescing of a field of extended friendship links, people discovering they all shared an interest in playing this kind of music around the same time. I was peripheral to that but had a couple of tenuous links: I played a solo set at a festival where some shovels-to-be were also performing; and a week or two later I gave a tattoo to another shovel-to-be. After that I started meeting up with them to play tunes.
I think our understanding of what we're looking for in traditional music – songs and tunes – has probably changed over the last few years, but I think these days we're just looking for material to manipulate, something to work with and upon. Everyone has their own interests that guide them towards this or that tune or song, but when things are brought to the group the question becomes whether we as a collective can work out what to do with this initial spark.
What are your tips for someone starting out as a folk musician in 2025?
Attend some sessions! And develop an ear for everyone's idiosyncrasies and failings. Perfect virtuosic playing is wonderful but there's also such beauty in faltering fingers and wandering voices.
Your music is helping to introduce traditional folk to a younger generation, possibly to those who have never experienced it before. How does this make you feel?
Great! It's always fun to get to introduce people to sounds they've not necessarily encountered before.
Discover more about Jacken, visit jackenelswythbanjos.com
Jacken is performing at the Feminist Folk Club on Wednesday 11 February 2026 at Cecil Sharp House, find out more
Photo credit: Louis Haugh
