Northumbrian Folk Music

Northumbrian folk music is the traditional music of Northumberland and the Anglo-Scottish border, built around the Northumbrian smallpipes, fiddle and a distinctive dance repertoire of rants, hornpipes and jigs. Unlike their Highland cousins, the smallpipes are quiet, bellows-blown and staccato, suited to parlors and dance halls rather than battlefields. Shepherd-musicians such as *Billy Pigg* shaped its piping canon, and the 1960s and 1970s revival led by *The High Level Ranters* and *Alistair Anderson* made it one of England's most cherished regional traditions, carried today by *Kathryn Tickell*.