2008 – 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.

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.