Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people of present-day Marin County.

Each week we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story,

exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Sam Lee is a Mercury Prize-nominated folk singer, a conservationist, song collector, and the author

of The Nightingale, Notes on a Songbird.

I spoke with Sam last month in the midst of England's nightingale season about the transformative

experience of creating songs in collaboration with the

Nightingale, the stories of ancestors that are passed through folk music, and the space for

communion that is open with silence.

It was a special conversation, and one filled with song song from both Sam and the Nightingales.

Sam, really lovely to join you today.

Thanks so much for being here with us.

Thank you, Emmanuel, for having me.

So I spent, you know, the last week or so kind of immersed in your work, reading your new book, The Nightingale, listening to your albums and some of the remarkable recordings you've done singing with nightingales.

And I was really struck by the relationship and parallels between folk music and bird song, both in your work,

but also more broadly in the deep connection to place and landscapes they both embody.

And this is something you write about.

So I was curious to start our conversation today by asking how you first came to experience this relationship between folk music and birdsong, one that ultimately led you into such a unique relationship with the nightingale.

The nightingale was not the first bird, though, like many birds, actually.

I come from a nature study background growing up on a wonderful organisation,

...