MY CULTURAL LIFE SAM LEE
Sam Lee is a Mercury Prize-nominated British folk singer and traditional Traveller music specialist. His current LP is Song dreaming and he plays at The Shaking Bog arts and nature festival, Co Wicklow, on Saturday.
BOOK WILD SERVICE
I’m loving Wild Service, edited by Nick Hayes and Jon Moses. It’s a compendium written by the leaders of the Right to Roam movement, giving insight into the many philosophies, ideas and calls to action that have fed into the R2R movement. It’s about what can we do for nature and how to better serve our highly depleted natural world as custodians, repair workers, healers, restorers and justice seekers.
FILM WILDING
I recently saw Wilding, an amazing feature-length documentary about the history of the Knepp rewilding site in Sussex. It charts the phenomenal success of Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree in transforming a degraded and exhausted farm into a thriving habitat for nature which now hums with nightingales, turtle doves, and white storks – which were extinct for over 600 years in the UK. Knepp is proof that returning habitats back to nature can be both profitable and spectacularly beautiful.
PODCAST EMERGENCE
I love the Emergence magazine podcasts. Based in California, the team led by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee h ost the most insightful culturally and ecologically deep podcasts that constantly introduce me to such fascinating people.
FESTIVAL SHAMBALA
I’ve just returned from my favourite festival, Shambala, in Northamptonshire. It’s an unbelievable gathering of people living their best lives, combining hedonism and a deeply intentional attitude toward ethical sustainable living. The Sunday night ended with one of the most profound musical experiences of my life: Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, the Iranian percussionist. His non-stop 90-minute solo concert brought me to inconsolable tears. I’m also a regular at All Things Fungi in Sussex. As a mushroom-devoted kid who was taunted relentlessly about it at school, I feel there is poetic justice that my odd obsession has become so zeitgeist that there’s now a whole festival devoted to fungi.