This interview did not have an auspicious beginning: I was talking for less than a minute down a line to into a mobile phone that, unknown to me, was pressed very close to an oxygen mask, which in turn was attached to the face of an asthmatic Eliza Carthy, Brit Folk's brightest star. Three days later the voice at the other end of the telephone is altogether more crisp and assertive: "I'd had a great time at Glastonbury, but I fear it did me in."

British folk music, and folk music in general, has been enjoying a new lease of life. Acoustic-based music in particular has been generating the type of record sales and concert attendance figures that 10 years ago would have been unheard of. Songs unencumbered by chainsaw metronomic beats - remember them? - are back with a vengeance, and not just in the folk clubs. The busker's friends - Oasis, The Verve and Embrace - have proven that a strum or two on the acoustic guitar is nothing to fear.

"I like people who are prepared to listen to anything," says Eliza, "people who don't define themselves through listening to one type of music all the time."

Eliza Carthy does not belong to the school of rock-posturing. On the cusp of 23, she is the only child of two of Britain's most treasured folk musicians, Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson. Like her parents before her, Eliza aims to change the gnarled face of British traditional music. Unlike her parents, she finds the tide of change flowing with her.

Continuous involvement in the folk circuit from childhood has inevitably given Eliza an advantage over her contemporaries, albeit one suffused with occasional incomprehension and misunderstanding. She's used to this, however. Growing up on a sprawling farm in the North Yorkshire moors, she was taught at a village school where her popularity was minimal.

"I was just a little weird kid who had asthma, wore glasses, read books, and who didn't like sports or talking to people," she says. "It was a village school - they had to pick on someone, didn't they? They didn't know or understand what my dad did. They assumed it was something really odd, so they took the mickey out of me accordingly. But no one bears grudges at school for very long. I was pretty horrible as well, if I remember rightly."

Although she sees herself as being very much part of the British folk tradition, she looks more like a latter-day, cheerful Cure fan than a female folk archetype.

"I sing folk songs and I play the fiddle. There's no escaping it. I'm not the archetype. But what is one? What does a typical British female folk singer look like now? People like Maddy Prior and June Tabor are not my generation, so I look like my peers. I don't think I'm that odd looking! I'm a person of my own age."

Her sound is also unique. Her latest solo album, Red Rice (Topic), mixes traditional songs with dub grooves and drum'n'bass. To closed ears, it's possibly a heretical combination. To the rest of the world, it's yet another opening of musical boundaries, full of zest and wonder, an experimental melding of sounds that makes perfect sense.

"It's very much in the spirit of what people do with British folk, and what they have been doing with it for years. The spirit of experimentation is what has kept the spirit of folk alive. There comes a point where you look upon folk music as an art form as well as a tradition. Let me put it this way - I don't feel as if I'm in a preservation society. It's actually poetry, words and beautiful music, and when you come across that as a musician you want to do things with it.

"As for the drum'n'bass element, it's what it's all about, isn't it? There are always going to be people within the folk scene who want things to stay a certain way. And there are always going to be people who want things to change. It's swings and roundabouts, really. I don't have any particular desire to bash people over the head with my music, but I also don't see any need to do things the same as everyone else. Variety is the spice of life, isn't it? I like being different, I really do. I also like choosing musicians who wouldn't normally play British music and seeing how they cope with it, laughing at the looks on their faces.

"I like messing with people's preconceptions. It makes for a pretty hectic life sometimes, but I've always made a point of asking people to come along with me and try playing music they don't normally play. The music that comes out of these sessions and gigs is very exciting. I'd far rather have that than a musician who hears a song and plays stock accompaniment to it. Trial and error helps sometimes."

Eliza Carthy and her band play Whelans, Dublin, on Tuesday, and the Erragail Arts Festival next Wednesday and Thursday.