Music has become a constant companion in modern life, rooted in rituals and intertwined in our intricacies. So, what would happen if you were to immerse yourself within its depths, exploring music’s many faces and learning a new song a day? Each is a new window into another time, a new sound revived from an instrument, or a new story from someone else’s tale.
This has been the reality for multi-instrumentalist and indie-folk pioneer Oli Steadman, having completed and pushed beyond his very own musical marathon: “365 Days of Folk”,
Oli may be best known as part of Stornoway, the celebrated Oxford band. But over the last year, the British-South African has been on a journey of his own, falling down the rabbit hole of folk and its storied history. Shaped by explorations of time, nature and spirituality, Oli took the time to sit down and reveal what goes into such a challenge.
Our conversation begins with Oli’s own origins, halfway around the world. Growing up in South Africa, Oli reminisces about how folk and its rich spiritual tradition became part of his life from a young age. Exploring South Africa’s musical rituals through his own curiosity, family traditions and the lens of colonial legacy, it soon became a self-education. A legacy of maturity and curiosity that now shapes his life of music exploration.
This only flourished when a family’s move to Oxford became a life-changing moment. As Oli says, he was “unexpectedly thrown into a melting pot of cultures”, of global identities and traditional Oxfordshire rituals. Like a duck to water, he engrossed himself in the multi-cultural mix of the city. From classic concert halls to May morning folk and the rambunctious Cowley Road, Oli had embarked on a journey of discovery. A journey, he discloses, that showed him just how captivating music could be.
It also offered him space to grow. As an immigrant, music not only became a path for Oli to navigate home-sickness, but also to find belonging, becoming part of Oxford’s fabled musical tradition himself. This began with Stornoway, but now, as he proudly highlights, it continues with the city’s thriving new-folk scene. A vibrant evolution of tradition, where “an intergenerational audience” pushes forward the scene. “You might find enough fiddlers in a pub to form an orchestra”, he quips.
It’s within this thriving ecosystem that Oli decided upon his challenge: to learn one song a day for a full year. The project initially aimed to take off in January 2021, after the entrenchment of the prior year’s lockdown. A period full of fatigue, where gigs ground to a halt, and the folk music groups Oli had cherished were forced online. In response, he kept his head high and sought refuge in the beloved genre, “folk always offers a form of escapism.”
The spectre of lockdown would eventually prove too much, each attempt falling to the wayside only months in. A start, nonetheless. In 2024, he felt it was time to revisit the project, but at a time when Stornoway triumphantly returned on tour, it proved again one step beyond. To succeed, Oli knew he would have to visualise every possibility in a day to ensure its success.
By 2025, there was a turning point. One May Morning was all it took, and suddenly Oli ratched into gear, “it became familiar, ritualised every day”. Before long, it was second nature, “I went in each day knowing it would have a powerful effect”. After the first months of the year had passed, he was certain, “I never want it to end”.A thought he perhaps hadn’t expected, but was now undeniable.
“It sorted out a lot of things personally”, he says, describing the musical therapy of the project. Just by choosing a different song, you can explore “what a day means”, he explains. Adding, as he argues, how someone can “inhabit or haunt a day” through a new song, each lending a day a new “resonance and character.”
Each day became different, waking up in a world of possibility, and the workflow leaner each month. Then it was done. He had hit his target.
Whilst working multiple jobs, juggling a young family and an upcoming headline show with his band, Oli had found the secret to success. Perfecting a workflow that wound through songs as old as 700 years, rediscovered tales rewritten and reinterpreted across cultures, geography and generations.
It wasn’t always smooth sailing, he does concede, though, “songs often require an accompaniment”, whether the learning of a new instrument or even language. More time pressure, but also more exploring, adapting to new instruments from across his heritage.
The anglo concertina, Maskandi rhythms, translating Spanish nursery rhymes for his daughter, and a few others. A “consuming but rewarding process”, he smiles, uncovering the journey of emotions and metaphors that ultimately taught him a wider life-lesson: “what’s really important in life”.
2026 has already been a big year for the multi-instrumentalist. Showcasing the songs, stories and other worlds he discovered through the project at the Manchester Folk Festival. Achieving a goal he confessed had been at the heart of the project from its start: live performance. Sharing all it had given him with others. Escapism, whether to a time centuries old or a faraway land.
What started as a challenge is now clearly a habit, a familiarity that has allowed Oli to explore the project with a refreshed energy. “I’ve loved discovering collections”, he admits, often learning blocks of 12 songs consecutively. Each season of 12 covers and explores themes that have permeated folk throughout its history, from the occult and witchcraft to the recurring blackbird.
Having completed his initial challenge, Oli shows no signs of slowing down, and a liking for numerology and coincidence draws him ever closer to the magic 730 days. As Oli points out, the folk collector Cecil Sharpe once said, “songs aren’t good because they’re old, they’re old because they’re good”. A cycle that Oli himself now helps push forward, inspiring a new generation.
At Manchester Folk Festival and beyond, artists are innovating, discovering new melodic patterns, new ways to interpret centuries-old ballads and creating global crossovers. A reality Oli pioneers, and simultaneously finds fascinating. An ever-young curiosity that he now passes on to his daughter, to global folk communities around him and to the melodies and stories still to come.