Landless
Saturday, 17th October 2026 at 7pm (doors at 6:30pm)
The Auditorium, St John’s College, St Giles’ OX1 3JP
FREE ENTRY – booking required.
The World’s Music at Oxford’s 2026-27 series begins with darkly ethereal and deeply moving Irish a cappella harmonies.
The Dublin-based quartet of Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch have been singing together as Landless since 2013, carrying traditional music with them into strange and beautiful directions. Their voices combine as one instrument in breath-taking tight harmony, or else twist around in intricate polyphony, transforming centuries-old ballads and contemporary folk songs into powerful, atmospheric explorations of love, loss and lore. Theirs is a sound stripped right back as to just leave its fundamental core: raw, unaccompanied human voice, only occasionally joined by sympathetic and sparse instrumentation.
Centring their most recent album, Lúireach (released in 2024 on the iconic Glitterbeat Records), around female perspectives, stories and agency, Landless grounded their repertoire in the traditions of Irish music while extending their reach to encompass songs from Scotland, England, and even Slovakia. The album gained them a deserved wider recognition including rave reviews in The Guardian, Songlines and The Wire, and the title of Best Folk Group at the RTÉ Folk Awards 2025.
Landless are part of the vibrant musical community that has pushed the darker edges of traditional music forward over the past decade, alongside Irish artists Lankum, Lisa O’Neill, John Francis Flynn and Ye Vagabonds, as well as kindred musicians on this side of the Irish Sea such as Stick in the Wheel, the Shovel Dance Collective, and previous World’s Music at Oxford alumna Brìghde Chaimbeul.
Please join us for what promises to be an intense and intimate evening of music and goosebumps at St John’s College as the World’s Music at Oxford welcomes Landless.
Dongyang Gozupa
Tuesday, 10th November 2026 at 7pm (doors at 6:30pm)
The Auditorium, St John’s College, St Giles’ OX1 3JP
FREE ENTRY – booking required.</p?
A unique fusion of folk music and progressive rock from a leading ensemble of South Korea’s new wave of traditional music.
The 21st century has seen South Korean art and culture truly explode onto the international stage: Korean films have won big at the Oscars, K-dramas have garnered worldwide attention, and K-pop has been one of the biggest phenomena in music. There has also been a truly electrifying and ever-expanding new wave of South Korean musicians using traditional Korean folk and classical music to discover new directions and meanings in sound – and Dongyang Gozupa are at the forefront.
Dongyang Gozupa are an instrumental trio based around the yanggeum (Korean hammered dulcimer) of Yun Eunhwa, together with Ham Minhwi on bass and Jang Dohyuk on a personalised drum-and-percussion kit. Their main musical frames of reference are prog rock and gugak (traditional Korean music), bringing them together with hints of metal, industrial, pop, psychedelia and the avant garde. They bounce these styles off each other, challenging and evolving them as they go, making a sound that can be dark and dissonant, but which always retains a playfulness and a sense of fun. This is a power-trio like you’ve never seen before… but get ready – this might just be our loudest concert yet!
The World’s Music at Oxford are proud to present Dongyang Gozupa in partnership with the Korean Cultural Centre UK and K-Music Festival 2026.
