2006 – Independent review

Cambridge Folk Festival, By Sue Wilson Five Stars 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.