Shrewsbury Folk Festival 2017 -Sunday 27 August 2017
It's two years since we were
last at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival, back in September 2015, when Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita performed on a typical rain-drenched English Bank Holiday
weekend. This year we were blessed with a warm and dry day, though the atmosphere
was perhaps a little subdued, the festival mourning the loss of founder and
co-director Alan Surtees, who established the event twenty years ago and sadly
died in June.
We came for the Sunday
only, mainly to see our old favourites The Unthanks and Seth Lakeman. Before
this, though, we witnessed an unexpected highlight in the Pengwern Marquee in
the form of the fantastic - but alas ephemeral - National Youth Folk Ensemble. This
group of teenagers had spent just four weeks learning a dazzling set of tunes
which they played with great confidence, skill and obvious enjoyment.
After an early evening
lull in the music we gathered in the Bellstone Marquee where The Unthanks performed,
as the end-of-summer sunset seeped through the entrances and exits. With songs
like 'Magpie', 'Mount the Air' and 'What Can a Song Do to You?' – and augmented
by trumpet, string quartet, drums and bass – they delighted and thrilled as always.
Loudon Wainwright III is an acquired taste (and one I'm afraid I still haven't
acquired), but he offered up his trademark mixture of irreverent, cynical songs
and anecdotes on guitar, piano and ukulele, ending his set with 'The Swimming Song'.
Finally, for us, Seth
Lakeman gave a breathless and blistering show, the lights perfectly synchronised
with his mesmerising fiddle playing, while his amazingly talented band managed
to keep pace, looking like a bunch of delighted kids on a musical roller-coaster
ride. Folk music can sometimes be surprisingly loud, surprisingly fast and very
exciting indeed.
