About

Described in The Living Tradition as ‘captivating, bold and striking’, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne is at the forefront of his generation of English folk musicians as both a powerful and commanding singer and a masterful player of the Anglo concertina and melodeon.

Cohen’s music is rooted in the English folk tradition, celebrating the age-old musical heritage of this broad and diverse land.  Traditional ballads, songs and tunes form the basis of Cohen’s material, but with a smattering of early music, ragtime, and music hall thrown in for good measure along with regular forays into the music of the Caribbean.

Cohen has released three critically acclaimed solo albums; his debut Outway Songster (2017) was described in fRoots as ‘the best debut album by a young British performer for many a day’ and led to Cohen being nominated for the Horizon Award for best newcomer at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2018. Rakes & Misfits (2021) followed with Cohen exploring songs and stories of social outcasts and reprobates. In 2024 Cohen released his ground-breaking Play Up The Music which explores the little-known connection between English folk and the music of the Caribbean and Black America. The album received widespread critical acclaim along with national airplay, an extensive feature in The Guardian and landed Cohen with a slot on BBC 1.

Cohen burst onto the folk scene in his teens with the energetic and much-loved trio Granny’s Attic, who continue to enrapture audiences with their unique high-octane take on English traditional music. Alongside this, Cohen also tours with Angeline Morrison’s Sorrow Songs Band, with Reg Meuross’s Stolen from God and with The Demon Barbers, and has also enjoyed alongside one-off collaborations with such folk luminaries as John Spiers, John Kirkpatrick and Jim Moray. 

Additionally, Cohen has featured extensively on soundtracks for television and theatre – his concertina can be heard on the hit Apple TV series Bad Sisters and he has toured nationally with the children’s theatre show Tales from the Lighthouse. 

Cohen’s passion for the English folk tradition has also led to work in research, publishing, and teaching. So far Cohen has been involved in publishing four books of English folk songs, has given several talks on the subject, and has worked with hundreds of students across the globe from school children to pensioners.