Miriam Backhouse

Born in Lewes, U.K., traditional folksinger Miriam Backhouse got her professional start on the British folk club circuit in the mid-'70s, and released a solo LP, the Saffron Summerfield-produced A Gypsy Without a Road, in 1977, and the album has become an underground British folk classic over the decades since. Backhouse moved to South Africa in 1979 with her husband, keyboardist John Erasmus, and made her home in the Valley of a Thousand Hills region there. She released a series of recordings in South Africa on her own imprint, Matriarch Music, as Miriam Erasmus, including 1995's Over Africa and 1996's African Rose (which earned her the lasting nickname of "the African Rose"), and branched out from folk into other musical areas, including appearing as Anna in Steven Stead's production of The King and I. A clear, expressive singer, Backhouse also plays several instruments, including guitar, viola, autoharp, and recorder, and has written hundreds of children's songs, but her forte remains the traditional British, American, and African material that forms the center of her live shows. Summerfield's Mother Earth label reissued A Gypsy Without a Road on CD in 2006, adding two live tracks recorded in 1977 at the Robin Hood Folk Club in Brinsley. Backhouse tours Britain annually while continuing to make her home in South Africa. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide