Oxford Folk Festival

The music spanned the whole range of standards at the Oxford Folk Festival. The headliners were consistently good and included the best live act I've seen all year (Salsa Celtica). The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain headlined Friday evening and gave us entertaining covers of an amazingly wide range of songs, with a considerable dose of humour. Both they and the audience had a great time. Saturday afternoon was headlined by Spiers and Boden, who were on fine form and I always prefer them as a duo rather than in their big band (Bellowhead). Saturday night finished with Salsa Celtica, who had enormous energy and any one of whom could keep the audience dancing by themselves (they all proved it). They were lively, unpredictable and musically sophisticated and I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat not wanting to lose attention for a second. I thought they were better at the straight celtic stuff than the fusions and the jigs were fabulous (they have an awesome fiddler), but I guess that is a more crowded market and the celtic / latin fusion helps differentiate them. Sunday afternoon saw two folk legends combine, John Renbourn (the guitarist from Pentangle) and Robin Williamson, a great harpist and storyteller. Their instrumental work was incredibly delicate and free-flowing and the harp was re-tuned towards the end for a remarkable blues performance.

The younger support acts were at best only bearable and a few were so bad I was driven to walk out after five minutes or, when that would have caused too much disruption, stick my fingers in my ears and hope the horrid noise would become inaudible (this didn't work). Giving hour long slots to introspective teenagers wailing tedious ballads (all in the same key and time signature) in Gaelic / Norwegian / gibberish accompanied by clumsily played stringed instuments was probably an error. I've heard better in most pub sessions and I've no idea how some of these got booked.