Martyn Wyndham-Read | en

Martyn Wyndham-Read (born 23 August 1942 in Sussex, England) is an English-born folk singer, notable as a collector and singer of Australian folk songs. He lived and worked in Australia from 1960 to 1967 and has been a regular visitor to the country ever since.

In 1960 Wyndham-Read moved from Sussex to Australia where he worked on Emu Springs sheep station in South Australia. It was while he was there that he heard, first-hand, the old songs sung by some of the station hands at Emu Springs and he became captivated by these songs and the need to know more of them and where they came from grew. He moved to Melbourne and became part of the folk song revival there and throughout Australia during the early 1960s.

Wyndham-Read returned England in 1967 and met up with the renowned singer and song collector Bert Lloyd, who himself had spent time in Australia. Wyndham-Read was asked by Lloyd to be part of the album ‘Leviathan’ on the Topic label. Soon after he started recording for Bill Leader.

In the early 1970s Wyndham-Read started the ‘Maypoles to Mistletoe’ concerts which portray the seasons of the year through song, music, dance and verse. This show has been performed for the last 37 years and has in itself become a tradition at Christmas time in and around the Sussex area.

Wyndham-Read is also the instigator of the well-acclaimed Song Links Project, these are two book- and- two CD sets a celebration of English Traditional Songs and their Australian variants, and Song Links 2 compares and contrasts English traditional songs with versions that have travelled over the Atlantic and been sung (and further developed) in North America with a cast of folk performers representing the cream of singers specialising in traditional songs from their own country.

Wyndham-Read fell in love with the Australian Traditional songs and has been singing these as well as English Traditional songs since then. He was well-known for his involvement in the Folk scene in Australia in the early sixties at The Reata, Frank Traynor's, Emerald Hill, and other venues. Also very involved with new songwriters such as Graeme Miles, Stan Graham, Mike Silver, Mike O'Connor, Eric Bogle, amongst many.He is involved with shows such as Maypoles to Mistletoe and Down the Lawson Track, and the Song Links project.

www.martynwyndhamread.com .