SAM Lee is a late convert to folk music, now on a mission to shake it from its torpor.

“I’d been drawn to world music first; that was on my dial when I was growing up,” says Sam, who plays the National Centre for Early Music in York on Sunday night.

“I was into Sufi music; tribal song; Fado; music from Papua New Guinea and India; a lot of blues; a lot of soul; and devotional music in whatever spiritual or religious realm I could find.

“I felt that ultimately folk music had become cosy but it’s not. It’s some of the most dangerous music out there, written about British culture and history that’s often desperate and yet folk musicians have softened it to make it palatable.”

Sam set about collecting songs from the Irish, English and Scottish gipsy and travelling communities for his 2012 debut album, Ground Of ItsOwn, and now his new EP, More For To Rise.

“The gipsy community have sung their music for their lives with such passion, and I hope that I do the same, being that I don’t come from British ancestry, but from Jewish ancestry, my family have come from Eastern Europe originally .”

Sam was brought up mainly in London, but also in Leeds, where his family had first settled in Britain. “The Jorvik Viking Centre was my favourite place to visit when I was ten and I love the Hambleton Hills too,” he says. Sam Lee & Friends play the National Centre for Early Music on Sunday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk.