Easy folk songs

[Tortelliniortortelloni]

Hello. Could anyone suggest easy folk/traditional songs for a choir of beginners? Thanks!

Have a listen to the O' Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, some great a capella and harmonic tunes on there that are fun to sing with a choir. In The Highways, You Are My Sunshine, Angel Band....

It's funny you should say that as we've just picked "I'll fly away"😊

Brilliant! We did a few easy folk songs with our choir last year, I'll try to list as many as I can remember:

• Aura Lea/Lee / Love Me Tender
• The Wellerman
• The Parting Glass - arrangement by the Wailing Jennys
• Bella Ciao

Hope this helps!

Oooh I love folk type songs but don't know of many so following this for ideas.

I quite like 'Scarborough fair', though not sure how choir-friendly that is. Also is that classed as a folk song 😂

Big Rock Candy Mountian
I Never Will Marry

Opportunity for harmionisng there

Paul Simon did a lovely version of Scarborough fair with anti-war harmonies.

Daisy Daisy (Give me the answer do)
What shall we do with the drunken soldier
Poverty Knocks () if you don't know it
Roll me over in the clover (if they're old enough to giggle too much, although I managed to do it with a youth theatre by some changing of the lyrics)
In a cavern (Clementine)
Blaydon Races
My old Man said 'follow the van'
The Mermaid (One Friday morn, as we set sail)
Low Bridge (everybody down)
Drill Ye tarriers drill
Widdicombe Fair (Uncle Tom Cobbly and All)
Old Joe Clark
Pack up your troubles
It's a long way to Tipperary
Go tell it on the mountain
Hey Mr Tambourine Man
I am the Music Man
Bobby Shafto
Yankie Doodle
Green Grow the Rushes O!
Cockles and Mussels
See at the water's edge (Smuggler's song)

We had a folk song choir at primary and these were some of the favourite.

Thanks everyone ☺️

Wild mountain thyme is lovely to sing with a choir. Ours recently sang John Rutter's I Know Where I'm Going, and I really enjoyed that.

An Eriskay Love Lilt - there are a couple of lines of Gaelic in it but some arrangements tell you how to pronounce it or give you the phonetic version (and it rhymes with the next line).

I love one that I think is called 'Shawnee Town' but it's a boating one and has the line in: "And it's hard on the beach-oar" (so need to be able to get past the sniggering and not great for age groups who probably won't!)

Linden Lea: there are some lovely harmony versions that you won't have to look too far for, but it can just be done with a melody.