When much-loved magazines fold, tributes quickly gush about how they captured new trends or scenes. But some magazines, like fRoots, have always sat outside time. A champion of the local and the international underground for over 40 years, it announced its closure last week after advanced discussions with a new publishing company fell through; an official statement online added that “decreased advertising support in the digital age, along with current political and economic uncertainties” hadn’t helped.

Take a look at its recent 40th-anniversary edition: it’s like a huge fanzine created by a groovy uncle, occasionally gazing at the mainstream but much happier exploring the margins. Its going out guide is staggeringly broad, revealing a fertile UK festival and gig scene rarely covered by the national press. Features include a dig into Kate Bush’s traditional roots, reports on the qawwali ensembles of Pakistan and a free desert festival in Morocco, plus Scottish folk musician Alasdair Roberts celebrating new artist Burd Ellen’s songs about women. The huge reviews section takes in London’s Cafe Oto, Korean experimentalist Park Jiha and Topic Records’ 80th-anniversary CD. Trendy bells and whistles are few, but it’s a rich treasure trove.

Folk Roots magazine, with folk musician Shirley Collins on the cover. Photograph: Dave Peabody/fRoots

fRoots began in 1979, at the height of post-punk and disco. Back then, it was The Southern Rag, a regional quarterly for central and southern England celebrating folk and roots music. It took off. In 1984 it was renamed Folk Roots, going monthly and national on the newsstands with a booming subscription base.

This sounds unusual for a decade so giddy on pop. “It was a glory time, actually,” says its editor of 40 years Ian A Anderson (he uses the A to distinguish himself from the man he calls the “one-legged Jethro Tull flautist”). A folk musician in the early 70s, Anderson played the first Glastonbury (Michael Eavis said “he saved the festival” by filling in for Marc Bolan), and later he became a record company runner, festival programmer and radio presenter, building connections across the industry.

“The mid-70s saw punks getting turned away from the folk clubs, but by the next decade they were letting them in,” he explains. “That generation were also interested in world music and politics, and figures like Billy Bragg were taking folk in another direction.” And people have been into blues, jazz and roots music throughout all eras of pop culture, he says. “What’s been fashionable never bothered us.”

The magazine became fRoots in 1999 (“It was the time of iMacs,” Anderson writes in the current issue – “it seemed like a good idea!”). Readers’ loyalty kept it going while many other magazines collapsed. Even in 2019, a full 90% of subscribers still renew, 40% from overseas.

This loyalty allowed Anderson to take risks. In August 2000, he put Robert Plant on the cover; a month later, young female singer and accordionist Bill Jones followed; both editions sold as well as each other. “That was when I realised buying fRoots is like going to a festival you love, where you don’t need to see the lineup. Our readership trusted us.”

Anderson (left) with staff in the magazine’s London office in 2010. Photograph: Judith Burrows

fRoots has championed artists early. Rhiannon Giddens had her first cover in 2007 as part of her band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Sam Lee was also supported long before his 2012 Mercury nomination. “It feels like one of the big trees has fallen,” Lee says of fRoots’ closure. “fRoots provided a real understanding of genres and community. Those years of acquired knowledge disappearing … we’re being left with an empty desert of Facebook comments instead.”

The closure of fRoots comes at a particularly sad time. A 2017 Kickstarter campaign helped reboot the magazine as a quarterly, improving its design, and giving its subjects more room and weight. In April, the US group Folk Alliance International gave fRoots a lifetime achievement award – folk singer Martin Carthy said: “[fRoots] opens people’s eyes to all sort of things they might not have imagined had anything to do with them. It encourages the idea we’re all in this together by championing all these weirdos.” Anderson was also meant to be retiring this summer after the 40th anniversary; he’s also had a second wind touring as a musician again (he’s now 72, having worked unpaid making fRoots for the last four years).

What particularly irks Anderson is that fRoots ticks many boxes for Arts Council and other public funding given its unique contribution to the arts. But magazines don’t qualify. “We give artists a leg-up to audiences that are ready to lap them up and aren’t served anywhere else,” he explains. “I worry about what will happen without that leg-up. We came out of the grassroots, and 40 years later we’re still connected to it – who else can say that? I’ve always believed fRoots is part of a wider musical ecosystem, where everybody depends on everybody else. Without those connections, things fall apart.”

With structured support from other public funds, or another publisher ready to recognise the loyal readership that kept it going for four decades, perhaps fRoots can flower again. Its fruits will linger with us.