We’re very excited that folk musician Sam Lee is going to be joining Norfolk Wildlife Trust at St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, on Saturday 21 November to perform a special evening of music and storytelling as part of our centenary celebrations.

A singer, song collector and passionate conservationist, Sam’s work breathes new life into traditional songs, blending ancient melodies with contemporary sounds and powerful storytelling rooted in the natural world. His acclaimed debut album Ground Of Its Own, was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize, and his most recent release songdreaming was named one of MOJO’s Top 10 Folk Albums of 2024.

Sam is also a widely respected voice for nature and culture. A co-founder of Music Declares Emergency and a champion of environmental causes, his work often explores the deep connections between music, wildlife and the landscapes we inhabit. 

We asked Sam to share some of his thoughts on nature, music and what makes Norfolk’s wildlife so special:

NWT: When did your interest in music and nature begin? Did one come before the other?

Sam: I think they actually were birthed very much at the same time. I grew up in a very musical household. My dad was a musician and sang a lot with me and my sisters, but they were also very good at taking me out into nature as a young kid.

It wasn’t until I got involved in an outdoor education charity as a child, which really had a strong nature connection practice as well as campfire singing, that those two passions were brought into an obvious relationship.

It fostered a real passion and sense of adoring being in the place of song around a fire, as well as the way community held that together, and how relationship to nature was through community.

NWT: Your music takes inspiration from both traditional folk music and nature – how do these two overlap?

Sam: Well, I would argue that it’s more a case of ‘where did they start to separate?’ rather than where do they overlap, because they’ve always been held as one and the same.

Folk songs have been passed down through generations of people who were very interdependent on nature, and nature interdependent on them. They had a strong and embodied sense of stewardship of land, and songs were part of the practice of being present and taking care.

Gardening, farming, growing, coppicing, hedging — a lot of the practices of being out, creating the materials and the fruits of our subsistence, had songs associated with them. And that has always been the case.

I just think that, at some point, mechanisation and industrialisation and changes in human behaviour started to really take pace, and that separation started to exist.

Of course, songs have always had a deep relationship to community and human patterns, and not all folk songs are about nature, but I think they all hold within them a kind of ubiquitous sense of nature connectedness at their heart. Often there are little gestures here and there, or the context of the time of year, that give a clear sense of who sang them and how knowing they were of what was going on around them.
 

NWT: Do you think that music can inspire people to engage with and act for nature?

Sam: The musician’s role in that is about telling the stories and building up a sense of adoration and relevance and beauty and irresistibility of the natural world. We might be able to remember what it was like to be good stewards, and to make better choices, and to decide that we don’t want to endorse the systems that pollute or extract.

Musicians create that sense of vibrancy, of wanting to be better, wanting to be part of something more ecologically sound and benevolent, and also something more sustainable.

NWT: The nightingale is a big inspiration in your work, what makes this bird so special to you?

Sam: Well, first and foremost, their extraordinary musicality. So much of the appeal of the nightingale is about how truthful and improvisatory they are, how connected they are to humans, their bravery, their virtuosity in the natural world, and their invitationality — their wanting to be heard, their wanting to play with each other and with us.

But also their rarity, and the fact that we are letting this iconic species — probably no other bird has held so much weight in folklore, folk song, poetry, prose and mythology; there just isn’t another bird that is as important — go extinct on our watch in our country.

So they are these kind of postcards of the sacrifice that we are making through not paying attention, through not caring.

NWT: Apart from the nightingale, which other species’ stories have influenced your songwriting?

Sam: Oh, many. I mean, the curlew, the turtle dove — these exquisite birds that are desperately rare, that have such love and yearning within their soul, occupy my heart dearly.

But then the more ubiquitous blackbirds and thrushes, song thrushes, robins and wrens have also. Each bird holds a sort of role in the greater orchestra, a soundtrack of the natural world that, for me, is such beauty and sense of place and feeling connected.

That song really is one of the most powerful elixirs for being present and knowing that the land’s alive around us.

NWT: We’re excited to welcome you to Norwich – are there any species or landscapes in Norfolk that you’re particularly fond of?

Sam: Yes, of course. The fens and the North Norfolk Broads — prolifically songful areas. I’ve spent years learning songs of Norfolk, particularly the sea, but also more inland as well. Such a rich musical tradition, very prolific.

Places like Holkham or Cley, the marshes there and the wetlands, and Wild Ken Hill — such amazing restoration work is going on there.

The bitterns, the booming bitterns. And also the nightingales. You have a not insignificant percentage of the nation’s population there.

NWT: You collect traditional songs - have you discovered any which have been inspired by Norfolk’s nature?

Sam: Wow, there are so many in the prolific repertoire of Norfolk. There’s so much nature adoration, as with all folk songs, but there are particularly good ones in celebration of the sea.

Of course, there are very complex and very profound musings on the wide ocean. I recorded a song back in 2020 called The Jasper Sea, which comes from Norfolk — a meditation on the power, the brutality of the ocean.

But also many beautiful songs about hazel nut trees and nightingales. The nightingale has lots of songs about them in the Norfolk tradition.

NWT: Norfolk’s flat, watery landscape makes us unique – how do you think a landscape influences the songs that come out of a place?

Sam: Well, that is a big, big question because ecology, geology, hydrology hugely impact the behaviours of the people above, and the practices, the trades.

There are lots of songs about eel babbing and reed cutting that you wouldn’t get in other parts of the country because they don’t have that landscape that holds it.

There are also lots of poaching songs and songs of disenfranchisement, which are symptomatic of the tragic dredging of the fens, and that sort of shocking industrial reclaiming of land and separation of commoners from the fens.

That water landscape holds a lot of songs of water trades that you don’t find elsewhere.

NWT: We’re passionate about access to nature for all at NWT – what are some of the simple ways you connect with nature in your day-to-day life?

Sam: Well, the day-to-day one is a very complex one because I can only speak for myself. I have lots of ideas and lots of suggestions I can make about how people can bring nature into their day-to-day.

I’m a weird fellow because I binge and fast. I live in central London, although I do have wonderful trees in my back garden, with woodpeckers and peregrine falcons nesting, so that’s very present.

For me, swimming in wild water is a big part of my escape — reservoirs and ponds and rivers. I love climbing trees. I find trees that I love climbing.

But it’s all about what access you have and where, and the routines that you can create around being out in nature. If you have a dog, that’s often something that a lot of people find is a way of consistently having to get out into a bit of green space.

Of course, it also works to the disadvantage that dogs are a great scatterer of nature because they are, by nature, disturbers. So if you can go walking without a dog, doing silent, quiet walking, slow walking — it’s often about pace. We do tend to stomp too fast.

Actually, slow boulevardier kind of peregrination, slow walking, is mindful and about sensory openness and stillness. That, for me, is a really important meditation. It’s something that everybody can do and feels counterintuitive because we live an over-paced lifestyle, but I really recommend that.

I also really recommend, in cases of beautiful nature, taking your shoes and socks off and going barefoot. It’s profoundly reconnecting, instead of having rubber trapping your feet, disconnecting you from the ground, and the earthing that you have to make