Rich Lines is a slam poet and one of the few working practitioners of folk rap, a form he has spent three decades refining and, where necessary, defending.

A lifelong Smiths fan, Rich first encountered Morris dancing in 1991, when he answered a notice in Solihull Library advertising “Morris dancing” in the belief that it said “Morrissey dancing”. He arrived expecting gladioli and heartbreak and was handed a set of bells instead. By the time he understood his mistake, the squire had locked the hall and he wasn’t allowed to leave. He has since described the experience as “the first time I truly wet myself”.

It was this experience that shaped his style. Through the nineties, at a time when Morris dancers faced open hostility in Brighton, Tooting and the wider Solihull area, Rich took their cause to open mics, pub back rooms and at least one village fête that asked him to leave. His early sets set the plight of the persecuted side against a backbeat, delivered with the conviction of a man who had seen a handkerchief confiscated in public. Critics were divided. The Morris community was not.

Over time, Rich’s work broadened beyond campaigning. He began weaving traditional ballads into his verses, bringing the cadences of the English song tradition into conversation with the rhythms of hip hop, and he found that the two had more in common than either side liked to admit.

His current project is Strange Heavens, a collaboration with the English folk singer and guitarist Jon Wilks. The record draws on traditional songs connected to the Royal Army Medical Corps and the painter Stanley Spencer, including “Green Bushes” and “Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still”. The first sessions took place in Bury St Edmunds, and the pair are now developing the material towards a full release.

Rich continues to perform wherever folk and rap are both welcome, and occasionally where neither is.