Ian A. Anderson

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Ian A. Anderson

Background information
Born	26 July 1947
Origin	UK (England)
Genre(s)	Folk music, Blues
Occupation(s)	magazine editor, folk musician, broadcaster
Years active	1960s – present
Website	myspace.com/vulturama frootsmag.com

Ian A. Anderson (born 26 July 1947) is an English magazine editor, folk musician and broadcaster.

He first came to prominence as a member of the Bristol based country blues scene of the 1960s, performing live and on record, both solo and with Mike Cooper. The middle initial was added at a later date to avoid confusion with Ian Anderson of the band Jethro Tull. In the early 1970s he founded the record label The Village Thing, for which he was also a producer. This label "championed" a number of folk musicians, predominantly from the Bristol area. With Maggie Holland, he performed in Hot Vultures, before becoming immersed in world music and forming a number of collaborations with musicians from various nations and genres. By this time, he had moved from the west country to Farnham, Surrey. It was here that, in 1979, he founded Southern Rag, as a local quarterly folk music magazine, in a simple A5 format. After 13 issues it had become very popular and respected well beyond the local area so Ian took the decision to make it a glossy, A4 sized magazine with national distribution, under a new title, Folk Roots. It was later to become a monthly publication and became well-known not only for its authoritative writing and outspokenness but for its campaigning for wider acceptance of both British folk music and world music. It is now renamed fRoots.^[1] Anderson has actively promoted world music, supporting tours by artists, particularly from Africa, who were previously unknown in the U.K.

Anderson has presented the occasional series for BBC Radio 2, hosted a World music program on "Jazz FM" and then spend 10 years broadcasting on the BBC World Service. He now hosts "fRoots Radio" on the web ^[2].