Cambridge Folk Festival 2005

United Kingdom | by Jon Wright | 31 July 2005

Friday's events...

Despite the sheen of having the BBC involved, Cambridge remains, at its very core, a huge community event. Organisationally watertight, family friendly and with the most inclusive attitude of any festival, particularly towards those with disabilities, Cambridge stands as the best advertisement we have for civic run festivals. The council do have advantages, the site at Cherry Hinton is virtually semi-permanent nowadays, and this allows facilities to be installed, proper toilets with running water and hot showers, plus the more prosaic things like markings for the tents and stages. Every year, most of the stalls and stands are the same, and they stand in the same place. The campsites are 'white-lined' to delineate camping areas and walkways, even the car parking stewards are the same. Hello Roger. Hello Anna. Year after year Cambridge rolls on with the same ethos, same site and the same people. It inspires a loyalty that only comes from familiarity and that makes it, by turns, extremely special, undeniably comfortable and sometimes, just sometimes, a little bit staid.

Musically, Cambridge has always teetered on a folk/populist tightrope, balancing the requirements of a hardcore, active folk contingent; with those who are content to plot-up like they are spending a day on the beach and just soak up the atmosphere rather than making one.  Across 4 days, organiser Eddie Barcan has the scope to provide a bill that pleases everybody and predominantly, this year, he is successful.

With so much doubling up on the bill and only three real stages, it is possible, with a little planning, to see everyone you really want to see at least once.  For those on site during kick-off on Thursday night, Hayseed Dixie, those redneck boys with a penchant for carving up classic rock tracks, headline Stage 2. Using banjos and fiddles to re-interpret the monsters of rock, them Hayseed boys rip and pick their way through their set and leave the crowd shouting 'Hell Yeah'.  They are not breathtaking musicians, nor are they overly charismatic, but Hayseed Dixie are a laugh, and that's probably all they ever wanted to be. A curious antipodean brew follows. Named after a child's picture, spied on a fridge, that depicted a world ruled by cats, The Cat Empire are an unholy mix of funk, jazz and Cuban with healthy doses of reggae and the occasional dash of hip-hop. Theirs is a celebratory, bouncy music that really catches Cambridge off guard and gets everyone, finally, dancing.  I take a wander around after grooving with the Cats and run into Harry Rhodes from the trade union Unison. He is quick to point out the he is part of Britain's biggest trade union, but we quickly side-step the politics and move onto the important stuff, the effort Unison has put into providing the best disability access of any UK festival, for the past 15 years. Every stage has a special viewing platform for wheelchairs, (you don't even have to bring your own), there are specially trained stewards and even Braille programmes for the blind. Things like this are typical of the way Cambridge is run and it has a run by-the-folk, for-the-folk ethos that permeates every corner of the site. 

On my way back to catch Scottish songstress KT Tunstall, I look in on the expansive tent of another organisation with a long history at Cambridge, The St John's Ambulance. I only pop in for a plaster, but soon find myself giving a series of personal details and as I scan the huge form in front on the lap of the nurse, I am reminded what a great bunch of unsung heroes populate our summer gatherings. Despite the bureaucracy, I head for KT's headline slot with a fully taped-up finger. Eye To The Telescope, KT's Mercury -nominated album has done brisk business and she appears tonight to a crowd who treat her like a returning folk veteran, rather than a newbie. Her music has touches of KD Lang at her very best, but in places, particularly the impossibly addictive 'Other Side of The World' KT shows a maturity and passion beyond her fragile years that suggests big things for the future.

After her, a woman who quite simply is a living legend, Mavis Staples. Joined by her older sister Yvonne, Mavis, now 65, delivers a hilarious, energetic and deeply soulful set that hits everyone right between the eyes and ears. Between her blues outbursts, were she unleashes her rich, authoritative voice on the reverential crowd, Mavis makes jokes. The funniest is a rambling diatribe on the subject of Beyonce. 'I'm old school', she begins, "The record companies y'know, they don't like old school, they want Beyonce. Well let me tell you, I used to be Beyonce and if Beyonce keep on living, she gonna be a Mavisee". It's a riot, and from the moment she walks out, to the moment she leaves with a blinding version of Respect Yourself, the great Mavis Staples has Cambridge eating out of her hand. The Proclaimers follow, but luckily I don't have to walk 1000 miles to get out of earshot. It's close though and as I leave for the nearby Coldhams Common campsite, I'm sure I hear that song in the breeze but it could be something I ate.