Peak Inspired Folk Album Launches

Bella Hardy at the recent Edale Folk Festival.

The album comes with its own appropriately folksy local web site.

One for folk fans here with Peak District local folk musician Bella Hardy launching a new album, The Dark Peak and the White, which has been inspired by the local landscape, folklore and culture.

BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winner, Hardy, lives in Edale in the heart of the Dark Peak and is a well-respected musician and performer in folk circles. She launched the new album at the recent inaugural Edale Folk Festival, which was apt given that the songs on the album are based partly on works from The Ballads and Songs of Derbyshire published in 1867  along with her own songs based on local folklore and legends.

Anyone familiar with the Peak will recognise the localities highlighted by tracks including  Bradwell’s Lost Daughter, The Drunken Butcher of Tideswell, Castleton Gypsies, Fin Cop, Peak Rhapsody, Ilam Lullaby and Lament for Derwent Village.

If you want to know more, the album has its own impressive web site at www.darkpeakandwhite.com where you can listen to extracts from each song, find out more about the legends behind the compositions and check out images of the locales spotlighted in the songs. You don't even have to like folk music to enjoy the site, but it probably helps.