Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne on the ties between British and Caribbean folk music: ‘My ancestors could have heard these songs’

The young squeezebox player is illuminating the history of these endlessly intertwined traditions – that is, when his mum isn’t outbidding him for research resources on eBay

On a sunny Sunday afternoon late in the festival season, a young musician is alone on stage with an older crowd in the palm of his hand. He plays a sailor’s hornpipe he composed that playfully references Bach, a music hall song once performed by Miss Piggy (“so I’m in fantastic company”), and then talks about being outbid on eBay on a book of folk songs from Barbados. “Then I found out who the bidder was – my mother!”

A tall 28-year-old concertina and melodeon player, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne is a veteran at Bromyard folk festival, which he first attended when he was 11: he’s from down the road, raised in Worcester and Birmingham. His new album, Play Up the Music!, explores the connections between Caribbean and Black American folk songs and British ones, the latest of a series of fascinating projects he’s been involved in over recent years.