use of rock band levels of amplification and percussion it can be considered part of the electric folk movement. However, as it developed into new derivatives and hybrids, including Celtic punk, Celtic metal, and other sorts of Celtic fusion, the initial electric folk pattern began to dissipate. Folk punk In the mid-1980s a new rebirth of English folk began, this time fusing folk forms with energy and political aggression derived from punk rock. Leaders included The Men They Couldn't Hang, Oysterband, Billy Bragg and The Pogues. Folk dance music also became popular in the 1980s, with the English Country Blues Band and Tiger Moth. The decade later saw the use of reggae with English folk music by the band Edward II & the Red Hot Polkas, especially on their seminal Let's Polkasteady from 1987. Folk metal In a process strikingly similar to the origins of electric folk in the 1960s, the English thrash metal band Skyclad added violins from a session musician on several tracks for their 1990 début album The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth. When this was well received they adopted a full-time fiddle player and moved towards a signature folk and jig style leading them to be credited as the pioneers of folk metal. This directly inspired the Dublin-based band Cruachan to use traditional Irish music in creating the Celtic metal subgenre. Attempts have been made elsewhere to replicate this process with examples ranging from the Middle Eastern folk music of Orphaned Land, the Baltic folk music of Skyforger and the Scandinavian folk music of Korpiklaani. In Germany this trend is more closely associated with the neo-medieval music known as medieval metal. Festivals Fairport's Cropredy Convention (previously Cropredy Festival) has been held every year since 1980 near Cropredy, a village five miles north of Banbury, Oxfordshire and attracts up to 20,000 fans. It remains one of the key events in the UK folk festival calendar. After holding a successful open-air concert at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk in 2005, Steeleye Span decided to hold their own annual festival, known as Spanfest. Other, more traditional, folk festivals (Shrewsbury, Towersey, Cambridge and Sidmouth, to name but four) now routinely host performances by exponents of the folk-rock genre. Electric folk When English bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s defined themselves as 'electric folk' they were making a distinction with the already existing 'folk rock'. Folk rock was (to them) what