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2008

Hi-Arts Review

Sue Wilson checked out the Scottish contingent – and a whole lot more – at this year’s Cambridge extravaganza
Friday 8 August 2008

THE 44TH wasn’t the sunniest of Cambridge Folk Festivals, but the intermittent rain never threatened any serious mud, and the prevailing mood remained as benignly clement as ever. Underpinning this celebrated mellow atmosphere, which unites a crowd of all ages – literally from tiny babies to senior citizens – is a level of customer care, allied to clockwork-calibre organisation, that’s unsurpassed anywhere on the festival circuit.

Not only were the beer tent and the oft-cleaned toilets largely queue-free all weekend, for instance, thanks to the usual generous apportionment of space, facilities and staff, but after the one lengthy downpour on Saturday afternoon, a team of workers appeared with machines to hoover up the puddles.

Cambridge has long been an important fixture for Scottish artists, particularly since its current director, Eddie Barcan, has been a regular visitor to Celtic Connections almost since that festival’s inception. His appreciation and understanding of what’s happening north of the border has consistently been reflected, in recent years, by a proportion of Scottish music on the bill that punches well above our numerical weight: at least six or seven acts, generally, among an international line-up of around 40.

This happy state of affairs was officially cemented this year by the first ever Scottish Showcase at Cambridge, a partnership deal with the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), by which the eight participating acts from Scotland were highlighted more prominently and proactively within the event as a whole. The initiative was targeted equally at the festival’s famously discerning, 15,000-strong audience and – with Cambridge being just 50 miles from London – the numerous music-industry bigwigs routinely to be found hanging out backstage.

Apart from the SAC itself, the Showcase was probably the biggest deal for Orkney outfit The Chair, whose Scottish festival performances have already earned them honourable mention this year, following on from their Open Stage Award at Celtic Connections in 2007.

Landing such a prestige gig as Cambridge, for an act unknown outwith Scotland, represents a big break at this stage of their career, but probably wouldn’t have been possible – the economics of shipping an eight-piece band from Kirkwall to Cambridge being what they are – without a little help from SAC funds.

“It’s not about us paying fees – that’s the promoter’s job,” emphasises Ian Smith, the SAC’s Head of Music. “It’s about identifying ways we can help to secure the best opportunities for our artists, and then adding value to those opportunities through extra publicity and so on.”

All of which would signify nothing very much if the export being showcased wasn’t up to scratch – but thankfully all our musical ambassadors did us proud, kicking off with the Peatbog Faeries’ first set on Friday (unusually, most Cambridge acts play twice or even three times over the weekend), which resoundingly walked the walk immediately after the SAC hosted a drinks reception backstage.

As a resplendent marriage of the ultra Scottish and traditional – bagpipes, fiddle, whistles, kilts – with the funky and futuristic (monster grooves, sizzling brass, swirly psychedelic soundscapes), the Faeries once again proved themselves a truly world-class force.

The Chair, too, rose triumphantly to the occasion, opening their campaign at the unforgiving hour of midday on Saturday, first up on the main stage. Their high-octane mix of rollicking, beautifully arranged tunes with rhythmic rock’n’roll muscle, plus the odd raw-boned blues or rockabilly song, soon had a goodly share of the initially recumbent audience on their feet and dancing.

By the time they finished their third show the following afternoon – having riotously closed out the Club Tent on Saturday night – Stage 2 was a sea of jigging bodies and waving arms, with one elderly lady in the disabled enclosure dancing manically on crutches. They may have arrived as unknowns, but by Sunday’s end the word on The Chair was most definitely out – which for this taxpayer, at any rate, counts as a job well done all round.

Also new to Cambridge were the Orkney/Penicuik duo of Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller, who earned their place on the bill as current holders of the BBC Young Folk Award – a slot at Cambridge being an annual component of the prize – to which the SAC chipped in funding for an additional youth workshop, and the chance to launch their debut album, In A Bleeze, at the above-mentioned reception.

Again, though, it was talent and skill that centrally delivered the impact, as they captivated the crowd with exquisitely arrayed versions of songs traditional and modern, deftly complemented by fiddle, piano and step-dancing.

As a sampler or snapshot to illustrate both the teeming musical diversity and the prevailing quality of musicianship encompassed by today’s Scottish folk scene, the eight featured acts were commendably well chosen.

From their respective generational and gender contexts, Brian McNeill and Karine Polwart each flew the Saltire for bitingly articulate songwriting, compellingly phrased vocals and the rattling of complacent cages.

Jazz drummer Tom Bancroft allied his improvisational virtuosity with a liberal serving of vaudeville/slapstick-style daftness in hosting the highly successful folk festival debut of his Kidsamonium show, winner of the 2007 BBC Jazz Award for Innovation.

Despite starting off with a half-empty tent (being up against Britfolk pin-up Seth Lakeman followed by 60s legend Judy Collins on the main stage), the brilliantly head-to-head Scottish/Irish piping of Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson, also on their first Cambridge visit, swiftly drew a throng like moths to a flame, their incandescent duelling powered along by Ali Hutton’s guitar, Duncan Lyall on bass and Martin O’Neill on percussion.

And whooping up the Club Tent in one of the early-bird slots on Thursday night, when half-a-dozen or so local and up’n’coming acts perform as a preamble to the main three-day event, were Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers, proving not only that their fresh, quirky brand of Scottish contemporary folk-pop is developing apace, but that it can travel.

Given that Cambridge is, after all, an English festival – albeit one that’s never received a penny from the Arts Council of England – there was also a diverse spread of folk-based sounds from south of the border. Highlights included a richly entertaining set from Eliza Carthy, mixing classic traditional fare with self-penned material from her boldly adventurous new album, Dreams of Breathing Underwater, and a chattily companionable hour in the ever-rewarding company of Billy Bragg, including mass singalongs to ‘Between the Wars’ and (naturally) ‘New England’.

Both Carthy and Bragg also featured in the weekend’s main English showpiece, the live version of producer Simon Emmerson’s multicultural extravaganza The Imagined Village, rounding off Saturday’s main-stage bill alongside the likes of Carthy’s dad Martin, Anglo-Indian singer Sheila Chandra, dhol drummer Johnny Kalsi and Transglobal Underground’s Tim Whelan.

Despite its admirable ambitions and classy credentials, however, the project in the flesh seemed overburdened with a sense of its own importance, giving off a faint but deadening whiff of self-aggrandisement that saw this listener, at least, escaping to Stage 2, where the Peatbog Faeries were again bringing the house down in proper Saturday-night style.

First and foremost, however, Cambridge is an international festival, in terms of both its outstanding reputation and its programming policy, as well as being one that’s always championed the widest possible definition of the other F-word in its name. It’s this illustrious and cosmopolitan context that makes the Scottish Showcase so significant, underlining our artists’ duly-earned presence alongside A-list stars from right across the folk/roots spectrum.

This year’s top attractions ranged from k.d. lang, who thankfully got her monitor mix sorted in time to comprehensively slay the big-tent crowd with her magnificent version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, to Virginian bluegrass virtuoso Tim O’Brien, settling in for a couple of memorable backporch-style sessions with fiddler John McCusker, Altan accordionist Dermot Byrne and Irish guitar god Arty McGlynn.

Then there was the inordinately hot’n’funky Grupo Fantasma, a Latin posse from Texas who opened all 21 of Prince’s O2 Arena shows last year, and a spellbinding performance from Martha Wainwright, by turns teasing and splenetic, painfully confessional and hauntingly understated.

Dressed to impress in a black micro-dress, hot-pink stockings and four-inch silver spike heels, Wainwright also embodied the balance of continuity and change that Cambridge strikes so skilfully. Having made her Thursday-night debut here in 2005, this time she rightly commanded the big main stage – a stage that her father Loudon, as a long-time Cambridge favourite, has graced many a time before her, and to which she paid tribute with a delicately wrought, intensely felt cover of his anti-war song ‘Pretty Good Day’.

Telegraph Review

Colin Irwin reviews the Cambridge Folk Festival in Cherry Hinton, Cambridge
Thursday 7 August 2008

You’ve got to love a festival that pipes in the omnibus edition of The Archers as the warm-up act on Sunday morning. And you’ve got to love a festival that pitches together artists as diverse as Allen Toussaint, Eliza Carthy, Joan Armatrading, k.d. Lang and Bassekou Kouyate’s wondrous West African band Ngoni Ba and nobody finds it remotely odd.

While others pontificate about folk music and what it all means, Cambridge nestles cosily in the same rather quaint hidey-hole it has occupied for the last 44 years, blithely ignoring them all, unselfconsciously expressing the joy of eclecticism.

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Last Wednesday festival organiser Eddie Barcan thought he had a big hole in his programme when one of his bill-toppers, John Hiatt, cancelled due to family illness. A phone call later and he’d secured the services of Richard Hawley, a man who first built his reputation playing guitar with those famous folk groups Longpigs and Pulp.

It was a great call. Radiating genuine warmth and humility, Hawley walked on stage on Sunday night and seduced the festival in a way few of the weekend’s preceding acts had with his soaring Scott Walker voice, wry introductions and sumptuous Sheffield anthems. “I thought you’d all hate me, I was expecting to have bottles thrown at me,” said Hawley, touchingly overwhelmed by one of the weekend’s most rapturous receptions. It felt almost life-affirming.

The highs to that point had been sporadic with some of the best music in the heaving club tent where rich young talents Bella Hardy, Heidi Talbot and Mawkin:Causley, in particular, shone.

The mood elsewhere was relatively subdued though Billy Bragg was at his incorrigible best, returning with two of England’s finest - Martin Carthy and Chris Wood - for an inspirational close harmony version of Richard Thompson’s classic rallying cry, New St George. All three were back to close Saturday night’s events as part of an endearing Imagined Village show with its enlightened multi-cultural portrait of the English tradition.

Benjamin Zephaniah made a fleeting stage appearance, but Sheema Mukherjee’s sitar and Johnny Kalsi’s dhol drums are its unique soul.

The deliciously overwrought Martha Wainwright divided opinion. Her songwriting must go a long way to match either of her illustrious parents, but she gave us Pink Floyd’s See Emily Play and her histrionic Garland-esque delivery of Stormy Weather was spectacular. Far more interesting, at least, than k.d. Lang, whose own torch singing resembled a flickering match.

Other conclusions: Irish band Beoga are going places, Allen Toussaint’s Working Down The Coalmine will rock any joint, Karine Polwart gets better and better and Judy Collins can still sing.

The Guardian

Cambridge Folk Festival By Robin Denselow
Monday 4 August 2008

Eric Bibb, the American bluesman, declared that the Cambridge folk festival is "a holy event - it's medicine music". Well, it is certainly a fine institution, and the only surprise at the 44th festival was that it did not include more of the younger celebrities from the latest British folk revival. Seth Lakeman was on the bill, but there was no sign of award-winning Julie Fowlis or Mercury nominee Rachel Unthank, while Bella Hardy, the charismatic star of the recent Folk Prom, was mysteriously hidden away on the smallest of the three stages. But there was a powerful performance from Chris Wood, whose bravely thoughtful songs, such as Hard or the "atheist-spiritual" Come Down Jehovah showed that he is fast becoming one of our most intriguing new singer-songwriters.

As for the headliners, they ranged from the multimedia Imagined Village project to Martha Wainwright, leading the North American contingent who dominated the festival. From Canada, there was a welcome return by kd lang, looking cheerfully androgynous in a white trouser suit and showing off her gloriously soulful vocals and blend of country, jazz and cabaret styles on songs that ranged from Wash Me Clean to the new and crooned Once in a While, along with a memorable, dramatic treatment of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

There was more impressive country-jazz experimentation from Canadian-American Devon Sproule, with cheerfully slinky and musically acrobatic songs like Let's Go Out, while Elizabeth Cook's old-school country showed she had been listening to a lot of Johnny Cash.

Best of all, there was the rolling New Orleans piano work of Allen Toussaint, and his string of classic pop compositions, from Working In The Coal Mine to Southern Nights. Overall, there was perhaps more nostalgia than innovation, but this was another successful Cambridge.

Cambridge News Review

Singing in the rain by Nik Shelton
Monday 4 August 2008

The old and the new collided at the 44th Cambridge Folk Festival this weekend.

Veteran artists like Judy Collins, Billy Bragg and Joan Armatrading gave the crowds something to cheer about, but more than ever the festival offered a glimpse of folk music's cutting edge.

Groups like acoustic electronica collective Tunng, Celtic dance group Peatbog Faeries and the new genre-bending musical project The Imagined Village, proved the festival organisers have their ears to the ground and their minds open to the new directions traditional music is taking.

While the event has been blessed in recent years with baking sun and cloudless skies this year their luck changed and umbrellas, raincoats and improvised tarpaulin shelters were always close at hand ready for the next downpour.

The festival kicked off on Thursday with local acoustic rock and rollers The Shivers. It may have been the first set of the festival but it was sadly the last for the band who have decided to call it a day despite a small army of fans and several successful folk festival appearances under their belts.

The opening night also featured one of the most talked about artists of the festival, 18-year-old Laura Marling who produced a collection of gritty acoustic songs which could easily have come from someone far older.

The folk festival got into full swing on Friday when the first act of the day to get everyone on their feet were Nashville family bluegrass band Cherryholmes who offered up a frantic ho-down that was just perfect for getting the Cambridge crowd in the mood.

Michael Talvey, Martin Julia, Gary Wilson and Rob DrydenAlthough often held up as spokesperson for the new generation of folk artists Eliza Carthy's solo material often stretches its wings in whatever direction inspires her. This is definitely true for her latest album Dreams of Breathing Underwater which sounds like nothing her parents Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson would ever have created.

However the album's name began to sound a little prophetic when the rainclouds started to gather and despite having the goodwill of the crowd on her side - she is the closest thing the folk festival has to a presiding monarch - she failed to set the stage alight in the same way she has in previous years at Cambridge.

Next up festival regular Michael McGoldrick stepped up just as the rain began to fall. The piper, flute player and former member of Celtic group Capercaillie, held together a high octane set of jigs and reels from an effortlessly tight band - which was all the more remarkable for the fact that his violin player had to be drafted in just a few hours earlier in an emergency and had learnt his parts in the car on the way to Cambridge whilst listening to the set on his iPod.

Antipodean roots collective The Waifs helped the damp crowd dry off with some feelgood tunes setting the mood for the evening's proceedings. But while a chatty Billy Bragg drew a packed audience on the main stage which stayed for politically charged folk rockers The Levellers it was on Stage 2 where the audience was really getting moving.

The evening provided a rare chance to witness two groups who really know how to raise the roof. It's almost unheard of for New Orleans brass bands to tour outside the US but the Hot 8 brass Band have recently become a cult success in Britain thanks to some club remixes on the dance scene and coverage in the UK music press. Hip hop, funk and jazz collided as the group delivered the most refreshingly original sound of the festival so far. But if any audience members had managed to stay still throughout their set they were soon moving their feet, whooping and clapping in time to the amazing Grupo Fantasma, the Texan latin funk collective who were in the UK for the first time.

They left the stage to a deafening chorus of encores and had no choice but to return and deliver a final killer blow of salsa flavoured grooves before the hot and sticky audience filed out still nodding their heads to the rhythms.

On Saturday folk singer Chris Wood got the crowd behind him with a gentle set of traditional English music and got a roar of approval when he invited Karine Polwart onto the stage to sing with him.But it was left to Gaelic collective Altan to help the sun break through the clouds and get the rain soaked crowd to their feet with a set that could have started a party in a morgue.

Malian musician Bessekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba were the act many world music fans had come to see and they didn't disappoint. The only thing he could say in English appeared to be 'Are you having fun?', but since the answer was always a very loud 'Yes!' from the audience no-one seemed to mind.

Acoustic bluesman Eric Bibb, backed by Pentangle bass player Danny Thompson, fitted the lazy late afternoon mood perfectly. And while Martha Wainwright looked like she might have been more comfortable on a smaller stage later in the evening (where her occasionally extreme language wouldn't have reached quite so many young ears), New Orleans funk and soul legend Allen Toussaint connected effortlessly with the crowd as he performed his own versions of songs which he has written for some of the biggest names in music over the past five decades.

The artists that many at Cherry Hinton Hall had travelled to see was Canadian country singer k.d. lang who bowled over the unconverted with the most stunning vocal performance of the weekend.
The set stretched from interpretations of classics like Neil Young's Helpless to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah which both surpassed the originals, to showstopping performances of her best loved songs Miss Chatelaine and Constant Craving and an old time country string band farewell which proved she can lick any tune she chooses.

Sunday saw festival favourite Seth Lakeman get a hero's homecoming welcome from the crowd while singer Judy Collins gave the older members of the audience something to reminisce about and the younger members something to go digging in the their parents record collections for. Richard Hawley proved to be the saviour of the final day after stepping in to take up the space left by John Hiatt who was forced to cancel through illness. UK music legend Joan Armatrading helped round off the weekend before the thousands of music lovers filed out the gates, each with their own favourite moment from another great Cambridge Folk Festival.

Yorkshire Post Review

Imagine there's a village... by Stuart Thompson at the 44th Cambridge Folk Festival
 
Martha Wainwright clearly isn’t up to speed with the right apparel for a folk festival. Instead of the seemingly ubiquitous open-toed sandals, boots or flowered wellies beloved of just about everyone – on or off-stage – at the 44th Cambridge festival, she’s opted for a fetching pair of silver stack slingbacks allied to garish pink stockings.

Of course, the crowd loves her dress sense – and loves too her splendid set which showcases her melodically memorable, and rockier than anticipated, songs. Strikingly beautiful was her cover of Pink Floyd’s See Emily Play, extra touching for the fact that its late composer, Syd Barrett, lived for many years as a recluse a mile from the festival site.

Wainwright’s Saturday night spot was just one of the highlights at an event whose line-up this year arguably bordered on the conservative, but was ultimately no less successful for that.

‘Legendary’ is a much over-used term in contemporary music, but it begs to be applied to New Orleans’s Allen Toussaint. In a career of over 50 years as performer, producer and songwriter he has worked with just about everyone, and his languorous piano work shines on his own compositions, including a splendid ‘Brickyard Blues’, a song which should have helped to make a superstar of the great Frankie Miller in the mid-70s, but somehow didn’t.

Saturday also saw excellent sets from American bluesman Eric Bibb, Canada’s k.d. lang and, most impressively, from The Imagined Village, a multi-media project featuring, among many others, Billy Bragg, Martin and Eliza Carthy, and dhol drummer Johnny Kalsi. It’s a celebration of the multi-ethnic pot-pourri that is contemporary English roots music, and it works – gloriously.

After 25 years, you know exactly what you’re getting from Billy Bragg, but his solo spot still enthuses a crowd more than willing to accept his personal brand of power-pop polemic and humour, while on the Friday his Imagined Village cohort Eliza Carthy showed why she has been at the top of the English folk tree for well over a decade.

Also beloved of the Cambridge audience is flautist and piper Michael McGoldrick, who has appeared here over the years in countless bands. Now leading his own group, it’s their superb playing which helps McGoldrick to truly soar into the ‘world class’ category.

Flying the flag for the southern hemisphere were Australia’s The Waifs, the unexpected hit of this event in 2003 and back this year to show they have lost none of their winning ways with top tunes, beautifully played and sung.

Among the other stand-outs were Quebec’s Mauvais Sort, a four-piece whose accordion-driven songs prove highly infectious, Dublin’s Kila, who succeed in melding all sorts of world music influences into a glorious, danceable whole, and the quirkily memorable 6 Day Riot, a young band clearly going places.

Add on Sunday sets from the evergreen Joan Armatrading and Sheffield songster Richard Hawley, and it’s clear that Cambridge is still getting it well and truly right.

2007

Guardian review

Cambridge Folk Festival, By Colin Irwin
Tuesday July 31 2007

Two Dutchmen in stripey swimsuits singing YMCA - that's my festival highlight," said the man from the Classic LPs vinyl stall, selling a mint copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to another devoted folkie on the campsite. His customers were still dazed after spending Saturday evening in emotional frenzy as rampaging middle-aged Romanian Gypsies - Fanfare Ciocarlia - threatened death by brass; then Toots & the Maytals finished off the rest. Sandwiched between them was Joan Baez, the matron saint of folk music, so stirred by the funky Romanian brass that she burst among them to dance before calming herself for a set she might have sung 40 years earlier, ending in an arm-waving Imagine.

Underlining the ludicrousness of musical classification, the biggest singalong was the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain's Anarchy in the UK, the promising Newton Faulkner raised the roof with Massive Attack's Teardrop, and the sublime Rachel Unthank and the Winterset almost stopped the show with an Antony & the Johnsons cover.
Cambridge wilfully ignores trends, admirably pursuing its own eclectic mantra and hanging on to most of its traditional values. The Waterboys set an uplifting tone on Friday night, Mike Scott rounding up anyone on the bill left standing for a cheesy, yet moving, ensemble finale of This Land Is Your Land. And with the likes of Baez, Steve Earle, Bruce Cockburn and Martin Simpson on angry alert, there was plenty of Bush-baiting to at least doff a cap to folk's old radical ideals, even if half the audience seemed, between acts, to be reading the new Harry Potter.


Other 2007 Quotes

“As integral to the English summer as Test Matches and tennis, the long-running Cambridge Folk Festival remains a veritable jewel amidst the welter of music events that now grace the season.” Rock ‘N’ Reel, November/December 2007

“It’s not arguably the best, it is the best music festival going.” Up Country, September 2007

“This easygoing veteran of the festival scene is dazzlingly well organised.” The Scotsman, August 2007

“It’s just as wild and just as much fun as the big rock festivals, but makes less fuss about it, and has much nicer food, drink, people and music” Radio Times July 2007

“Undoubtedly one of the finest events in the European festival calendar ,,,” MOJO, August 2007

“Cambridge Folk Festival is a gem among festivals.” Songlines, UK Festivals 2007 Edition

“The Cambridge Folk Festival has slowly carved itself out a reputation for overwhelming quality.” Going Out, 2007

2006

Guardian review

Cambridge Folk Festival, By John L Walters
Tuesday August 1 2006

The T-shirts tell their own story: Frank Zappa, Judas Priest, Bauhaus Brewery, South Australia Keg Demolition Team, plus the festival's own Cool as Folk merchandise. Cambridge seems relaxed about everything, including the meaning of folk, as long as there's plenty of beer. A bit like Womad, but on a smaller scale, and with more newspapers and Panama hats.

On its final day, traditional music is served by artists such as Tim Van Eyken and Mozaik, whose grizzled veterans explore pan-European roots with commitment and fire. Hebridean newcomer Julie Fowlis alternates sweet, nervous laments with jigs and reels. Her bodhran player, Martin O'Neill, enthrals the audience with a melodic, talking drum-style solo.

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Nickel Creek's distinctive sound is undermined by less-distinguished, indie-rock vocals. Rapid, asymmetric jigs evolve into Short People, which in turn segues into Bach courtesy of mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile. Fortunately, there's no shortage of good singing elsewhere. Cara Dillon's assured performance includes the moving There Were Roses, based on the true story of forbidden love that ended in death. Eddi Reader keeps the crowd happy with some nicely judged Scots favourites, and dedicates Perfect (from her Fairground Attraction heyday), to her late father. Capercaillie's Karen Matheson joins her for Burns's Ae Fond Kiss.

Emmylou Harris, accompanied by Pam Rose and Mary Ann Kennedy, looks and sounds as amazing as ever. Highlights include an a cappella version of Ain't Nobody But the Baby and a sentimental reading of the Teddy Bears' To Know Him Is to Love Him. What Emmylou announces as "another girly harmony thing" turns out to be a modified After the Gold Rush: "Look at mother nature on the run /In the 21st century."

Two guitar-based acts bring the house down: the explosive, jam-band-like John Butler Trio (from Australia) and Mexican duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, who quickly have the audience eating out of their very dexterous hands.

Independent review

Cambridge Folk Festival, By Sue Wilson 
Tuesday August 4 2006

Of all the birds in the world least easily fazed by the vagaries of human behaviour, the rare-breed ducks and geese that inhabit the pond at Cherry Hinton Hall, which has been home to Cambridge Folk Festival since 1964, must surely be the most blasé. Joan Baez famously got thrown in the pond by her crew a few years back, and even when the superstars of folk confine their activities to the main stage arena, a customarily sun-soaked Cambridge weekend will see children and adults alike splashing around among the waterfowl.

Cambridge again sold out in record time, and kicked off with a bang when Thursday's thunderstorms exploded around teatime. Needless to say, though, the parched East Anglian soil drank up the deluge and the clouds rumbled away to leave perfect festival conditions: scorching hot but with a freshened-up breeze.

No climatic distractions, then, from the main order of business: lounging about on the grass, basking in the rays and listening to a glittering panoply of international roots talent. Throughout its long and illustrious history, Cambridge has excelled not only in hand-picking English and Celtic acts, both traditional and contemporary, but at sourcing the best in Americana, from blues to bluegrass, country to Cajun.

Building on this rock-solid foundation, the festival's director, Eddie Barcan (the successor to the event's founding father, Ken Woollard, who died in 1993) has significantly expanded its world-music dimension, as exemplified by the headline presence this year of the Malian hot properties Amadou and Mariam, together with Mexican compadres Los de Abajo and Rodrigo y Gabriela. Cambridge's ultra-laid-back vibe - and state-of-the-art picnicware - can prompt accusations of audience staidness, but none of these acts will be carrying that story home.

Amadou and Mariam and Los de Abajo closed the main stage on Friday and Saturday, respectively serving up majestic, joyous Afro-blues and riotous mestizo punk, while the spectacular duelling- guitars firestorm that is Rodrigo y Gabriela incited an unprecedented frenzy at the usually sluggish opening hour of noon on Sunday. Other guitarists who brought the house down included the veteran Richard Thompson and the Australian jammers The John Butler Trio.

The former Catatonia front woman Cerys Matthews looked and sounded to be having a very happy festival debut, too, exercising her gorgeously elastic voice on material that ranged from gentle, sunny reggae to melodic power-pop. From the Britfolk brat pack, Seth Lakeman proved that his star, especially as a singer, is continuing to rise with two compelling performances, while an exceptionally strong Scottish contingent took in the veteran folk-pop powerhouse Capercaillie through Salsa Celtica's tartanised Latin party mix and the captivating Gaelic vocals of Julie Fowlis to the Highland teenage sensations Bodega, the current holders of the BBC Young Folk Award.

The mood was mellow but blissed-out by the time Emmylou Harris graced the stage on Sunday evening. The country diva was flanked by musicians who played on her mid-Eighties album The Ballad of Sally Rose, including the vocalists Pam Rose and Mary Ann Kennedy, who, in several round-the-mike a cappella numbers, adorned her achingly evocative singing with exquisite gossamer strains of barely-there harmony. A wide-ranging, quietly commanding set also took in several tracks from 1995's milestone Wrecking Ball album, plus Harris's dreamily melancholic contribution to Brokeback Mountain, "A Love That Will Never Grow Old", and a heart-rending version of Neil Young's "Mother Nature". And when she weighed into the gospel chorus of "We Cried Hallelujah", Harris surely spoke for everyone in the field.
 

Independent review

Cambridge Folk Festival, By Sue Wilson

Wednesday August 3, 2005

It may have been just a passing bush telegraph rumour but tickets for this year's 41st Cambridge Folk Festival - face value £80 - were changing hands on eBay for up to £500. Having once again sold out in record time, the event entered fifth decade in fine fettle, an operation graced with all the smoothness of a well-oiled machine.

For the Festival's many annual regulars, stepping on site at Cherry Hinton borrowed for the weekend from its usual role as a suburban park, is like entering a marvellously benign time warp. People have their favourite trees to camp under each year; the beer tent tent, infinite cafe, Japanese noodle bar and lost-children depoistory are reassuringly in their same places. The atmosphere of thoroughly chilled, richly seasoned enjoyment always prevails.

Despite a rival organ's advance sneer at the event as 'a resolutely style-free bastion of earthiness and real ale', Cambridge's style is endlessly eclectic: sartorial trends this time ranged from the baggy and black favoured by the Idlewild contingent - who were treated to a compelling Sunday acoustic set from the Scottish five piece - to a number of men in frocks.

Idlewild clearly weren't worried about their standing in the stakes being compromised, and neither was Mercury-nominated Cambridge debutante KT Tunstall. 'It's totally absolutely marvelous to be here', was her verdict, during a categorically stellar performance. 'I've wanted to play this Festival for ever because you all listen.'

As well as hot alternative properties like Tunstall and Idlewild, the choice of sounds encompassed everything from barn-storming Scottish folk orchestra The Unusual Suspects to the Latin/hip-hop grooves of The Cat Empire.

In between were American legends as diverse as The Blind Boys of Alabama, country-blues veteran Rodney Crowell, and soul/gospel princess Mavis Staples.

Also prominent were The Proclaimers, whose triumphant Friday night set - in the words of one observer - 'left every Scotsman in the fields crying', and the multi-award-winning singer songwriter Karine Polwart, previewing some excellent new tracks for her second album. The all-instrumental powerhouse that is Blazin' Fiddles, meanwhile, fitted in two thoroughly exhilarating shows around the small matter of a prior Saturday night engagement at the Albert Hall, headlining Fiddle Day at the Proms.

Christy Moore worked his customary magic in Sunday's headline slot, commanding pin-drop silence one minute, whipping up a riotous sing-along the next. Other highlights included the adventurous roots-funk of Spanish bagpiper Xose Manuel Budino, and the bruised, brooding lyricism of Louisiana songstress Mary Gauthier, but the true star attraction was the Festival's own signature brand of quirky artistic intelligence and Swiss-watch logistical prowess.

Guardian review

Cambridge Folk Festival, By Robin Denslow

Tuesday August 2, 2005

There was a moment on Sunday evening when it seemed that this was the best spot on the planet. Tinariwen, from Mali, were playing their slinky seser blues on one stage, Kate Rusby was singing on the other, and Ireland's greatest singer Christy Moore, was about to come on.

The Cambridge Folk Festival may be 41 years old but has flourished by constantly widening its scope; this year, it included music from Americana (country, pop, blues and gospel), Scotland and Ireland, Mali, Canada and, of course, the latest English folk revival.

Kate Rusby's new album, out next month, shows her development as a songwriter, and for this preview she was joined by a band that included fiddle and accordion, and a brass section from the Coldstream Guards. Their sturdy, tuneful treatment of the pop standard You Belong To Me was matched with the new but traditional-sounding Elfin Knight, or old favourites like Botany Bay, all treated with her exquisite, cool vocals.

There was more experimental fusion of brass and the English tradition from Bellowhead, in which John Spiers and Jon Boden were joined by brass, percussion, cello, guitar and fiddles in an entertaining, theatrical 11-piece band that veered between dance tunes, music hall and experimental jazz settings. Their performances were exuberant, if sometimes over-ambitious, but they could develop into a great folk dance band.

The US contingent included veteran songwriter Jimmy Webb, who sat at the grand piano telling stories about Richard Harris or Harry Nilsson, who said 'There's only one thing wrong with your voice - it stinks'.

Unfortunately, Harry had a point. The composer of everything from MacArthur Park to By The Time I Get To Phoenix and Wichita Lineman proceeded to murder his own material. More reliable, US styles included gospel from the Blind Boys Of Alabama, old style R&B from the exuberant Shemekia Copeland, and a rousing, powerful country rock set from Rodney Crowell.

As for this year's singer-songwriter discovery, it was Mary Gauthier from Louisiana. She's had a genuinely tough life (drink, drugs and jail) but emerged to write powerful, well-observed songs, from the personal Long Way to Fall to the ecological and social disasters of her home state in Sugar Cane. Next time round, she deserves to be a headliner.

The finest performance came from Christy Moore, with subtle backing from electric slide guitarist Declan Sinnott. He was soulful, thoughtful, funny, angry and his political songs included a timely and powerful version of North and South, his plea for a change of direction in Ireland. A classic Cambridge.

The Times review

Cambridge Folk Festival, By David Sinclair

Tuesday 2 August 2005

Music Festival don't come any better organised or relaxed than the 41st Cambridge Folk Festival. Of the 12,000 tickets sold this year, about 2000 were for children, and many of the adults have been coming since they were children themselves. This made for a welcome air of family bustle and leisurely bonhomie.

Actually, there was something going on everywhere you turned. Having opened the day's proceedings on the main stage, the Appalachian busking band Old Crow Medicine Show put on a superb impromptu performance in a wooded glade for a television show presented by Mark Radcliffe, the Radio 2 DJ.

Radcliffe could later be found singing and playing guitar in the Mojo tent with his group the Family Mahone, a remarkably capable performance which, although leavened with northern humour, was certainly no joke.

Over on Stage two, a succesion of exciting new groups including the Cat Empire, from Australia, the Duhkls, from Canada and the English ten-piece ensemble Bellowhead skillfully imported influences from every point on the popular music compass: funk, rock, soul, jazz, calypso, brass band - you name it. On this evidence, folk music has rarely been in a more vibrant condition, even if it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify.

But whatever it now sounds like, folk is still about telling stories and for most performers this meant adding a tall tale or two between numbers. Jimmy Webb took this practice to new extremes, with several narrative 'introductions' that seemed to go on longer than the songs themselves.

One thing he didn't have to explain was why he continues to be more admired as a song writer than as a performer. Leaden, cabaret versions of his classic compositions By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Wichita Lineman and others, said it all.

Kate Rusby, whose group was augmented by a horn section recruited from the Coldstream Guards, provided a cheerful English folk experience, while Karine Polwart with her band dressed in kilts added a bonny Scottish touch, briefly converting the main stage audience into a vast singing workshop.

Sadly Lucinda Williams had pulled out due to ill health. Her replacement, the Nashville-raised singer Laura Cantrell, supplied an enjoyable set cut from old-school country and western cloth. But it was Mary Gauthier, from Louisiana, who most closely resembled Williams and who was the revelation of the day.

Bluesy and severe, she conjured feelings of intense heartache and images of Southern apocalypse in Sugar Cane, before ending with a rousing Wheel Inside the Wheel.

Daily Telegraph review

Cambridge Folk Festival, By Peter Culshaw

Tuesday 2 August 2005

“Cool as Folk” said the T-shirts, and bizarrely for those of us saddled with outdated preconceptions of folkies with beards listening to endless dirges about Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Cambridge Folk Festival is becoming rather fashionable, with a new generation of musicians dragging the genre jigging and screaming into the modern world.

Seth Lakeman, for example, is a young man in a hurry, playing numbers from a forthcoming album that sounds hugely promising. Like an angry Nick Drake, he sings surrealist songs about shooting his girlfriend whom he mistook for a swan.

I can only echo Radio 2 DJ Mark Harding’s assessment of 18-year-old fiddle player Lauren MacColl’s evocative performance as “the most beautiful playing of a slow air I have ever heard”, while Scottish singer-songwriter Karine Polwart has come from nothing in the past year to produce an album, Flautlines, that suggests a major new song writing talent in the making. Polwart had degrees in philosophy and has undertaken tough social-work jobs: both experiences seem to have fed into her gritty, intelligent and heartfelt songs.

On the main stage, another songwriter KT Tunstall is already in the pop charts with her engaging and intense songs and was one of the hits of the festival.

But, while the festival was inspiring in its highlighting of new British talent, bands such as Tinariwen, an earthy desert blues band from Mali, added a global dimension. There was also a strong North American presence, including Rodney Crowell, who, having been a purveyor of mainstream country hits, produced a wonderful, edgy autobiographical album The Huston Kid a few years ago.

It was hard to resist Mavis Staples Memphis-style damaged soul voice, which veered from sub bass growls to a mid-range tone of sandpaper and molasses backed by a first-rate, world-weary band. And there was a strong buzz about the debut European gig by the Canadian band the Duhks, who mixed soul, folk and bluegrass.

With all this cutting-edge newness going on, it was almost a relief to catch classic acts such as Altan, whose Donegal-based music swings with the same intensity as it has for more than 20 years, and who still provoke audience delirium. Blazin’ Fiddles – who also played the proms on Saturday-flew the flag for Scotland, playing assorted arrangements of Highland and Shetland music, with an unusual line-up of fiddles, piano and guitar.

Now in his 40th year of gigging, Christy Moore was another folk legend who has lost none of his passion and charisma, even if some of his political ballads seem dated. And Kate Rusby, by now something of a veteran, confirmed her status as the brightest star of English folk music with her evocative set.