Folk - Rory McLeod

Rory McLeod is the sort of performer who gets called a ‘national icon’. He describes himself as “an ex-circus clown and a fire eater, a one man soul band, poet and a story teller”. Speaking to him over the phone I ask him to describe his music. “I call my songs dance stories”, he says. “I tell tales about everything, my family, my gran - who was a dancer - racism and the world. I’ve got a song about a 400-year-old fruit and veg’ market and one about a young woman who gets pregnant and leaves her baby under a tree. The words he sets to a hybrid of Latin and plasma tunes drawn from his mixed Russian and Scottish heritage. Accompaniment is provided by himself, on a dazzling array of instruments. He plays everything from the harmonica to the trombone to the spoons although, he claims “I can’t play any of them accurately”. And he’s usually wearing his tap shoes. “I wear my tap shoes to provide a rhythm to my songs. I can’t really dance, though. I wish I could. I should have asked my gran before she died.

McLeod’s distinctive high energy performances have continually attracted acclaim and in 2002, he was awarded the BBC Radio 2 Best Live Act Folk award. “I try to take people on a journey in my performances”, he tells me down the line. “Whether it’s an emotional or physical journey, I try to get people to dance with me; but I’m quite happy for people to sit and listen and just travel with me in their head”. ER