Gemma Khawaja is a singer & guitarist from the Midlands, now based in Norfolk playing and singing traditional songs of the British Isles and creating her own songs and arrangements inspired by rural poets, mythology and folklore. Gemma’s arrangements of traditional songs emphasise the universal human emotions, stories & themes found in folk traditions and sensitively draw out the richness and beauty of the old melodies. Gemma has a strong, unaccompanied voice and plays the guitar, tenor guitar and dulcimer and regularly accompanies herself live. In her recordings, a variety of instruments such as dulcimer, guitars, drone sounds from shruti box/concertina chords and various percussive sounds are used plus a lot of everyday sound recordings and various editing to create evocative atmospheres.
Monthly Archives: September 2025
Bermondsey Folk Festival 2025 featuring Jacken Elswyth
Jacken Elswyth is a London-based folk musician, banjo player, and instrument builder.
In her music making she is focused on exploring traditional tunes, developing extrapolations on folk styles and techniques, and investigating drone, ambience, and improvisation within and beyond folk music. She organises the Betwixt & Between tape series as one avenue of these investigations. She plays and records solo and in collaboration – with Shovel Dance Collective, Sullow, and others.
She also builds and repairs banjos and other instruments, with a focus on folk craft and vernacular styles. This practice and these instruments inform and facilitate her music making.
Bermondsey Folk Festival 2025 featuring Bity Booker
Don’t miss it, the Bermondsey Folk Festival is back on Saturday 27 September! Join us from 12pm for an afternoon of folk music and dance from around the world.
Bity Booker is an Italian/Australian alternative folk musician and visual artist based in London. A lover of nature, animals and folklore, she writes and sings gorgeous, wistful songs channeling a lyrical folk tradition. Her work is inspired by the weird and wonderful quirky stories in our world and her deep and curious imagination. Bity grew up in an artistic family in the countryside in Umbria, she graduated from Art School in Italy and lived between Italy, Australia and England. She has had an eclectic musical journey, in her teens she became involved in the heavy metal underground scene and sang in metal bands, alongside writing her own original material with classical guitar and voice. She sang in choirs in Italy and Australia while studying ethnomusicology and anthropology. Musically, she is inspired by the distinctive voices of John Jacob Niles, Malvina Reynolds, Vashti Bunyan, The Incredible String Band, Connie Converse, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Molly Drake but also traditional folk music and singers, opera and psychedelia. Bity has developed her own musical and visual world, she has a distinctive and bewitching voice, her songs are melodically addictive, rich of storytelling which captivates and draws in her audience for more. She releases music on her own music label, FreakFolk Records, and has illustrated three original song books.
‘Dreaming in the Morning’ (5 March 2022) was recorded in 2021 at home on a tape machine, the songs are a dreamy ode to nature, about that instant when alone with your mind in the woods, you become one with the trees and the birds and everything seems to fall into place, quietly. In 2024 she released two new songs ‘The Crow’ and ‘The Cuckoo’, followed by ‘The Frog, The Mouse, The Ship, The Cabin Boy’ in May 2025 which includes two re-editions of two traditional folk songs.