Sunday
Brighde Chaimbeul, is the winner of this year's Young Folk Award and as part of that prize gets to play both Cambridge and Cropredy, something not attained by many artists during their entire careers, but it's not like she's unfamiliar with festival stages, like so many top young traditional musicians there's a wealth of experience that sits behind her.
Whilst she won the award on her own, she's performing today as a trio alongside sibling, Mairi Chaimbeul and guitarist Innes White, who has also worked with another Young Folk Award winner, Mischa MacPherson. Like MacPherson, Chaimbeul first graced the stage here as part of Feis Rois, which shows just how well that scheme is working.
Whilst the music is focused very much in the traditional space, Brighde doesn't restrict herself to the archives of just one region, drawing on tunes from both Scandinavia and Canada and bringing them into the central Celtic core, both as tunes in their own right as well as how other tunes are played, for example bring the more rhythmic Cape Breton style into a couple of Scottish tunes. An absolutely top draw set.
Having honed my air fiddle technique earlier at the workshop there's now a chance to find it wanting as I head to Stage One to catch the real thing with Blazing Fiddles. Over the years The Blazers have had a fluid lineup with many great players passing through their ranks. The current lineup consisting of Rua and Bruce, Jenna Reid, Kristan Harvey, Anna Massie and Angus Lyon.
They are a band with a lot of movement, not just across the strings but up and down the stage forming small groupings and parting almost as quickly. The fiddle is a dynamic instrument and when you have so many great players in the same place, fireworks really is the only result. There is a natural flow to the music and it permeates down into the core of the musicians with beaming smiles everywhere you look and I'm gutted that I'm not going to hear it all, but I hear the call of a Dorset band, Ninebarrow getting ready for their Cambridge Folk Festival Showcase up at the Club Tent.
Former winners of the Fatea Debut Album Of The Year, Ninebarrow released their sophomore album, "Releasing The Leaves", earlier this year. They've endured some good natured ribbing from fellow Dorset band Kadia, who played Stage Two yesterday, but as has been pointed out, unlike Kadia, they are mentioned in the program. It's great to have two fantastic Dorset bands here, makes you feel proud.
Ninebarrow have forged a reputation on two strands, their excellent arrangements of traditional songs and their own songs. Their own songs have established the duo as storytellers, drawing on themes established by the landscape, history and folklore, a potent brew.
They also deliver that material with a combination of great harmonies and a real sense of passion aided and abetted by an old reed organ that contributes to the distinctive sound. Just to show that they are the complete thing and the real deal, check out the band's banter between songs which comes with a sense of the joy of life, no matter how dark the subject matter of the next song is going to be and dark it does get.
They deliver an excellent set, one that gets the audience clapping and swaying along. The songs are striking a real chord, no pun intended and it looks like Jon & Jay's decision to give up the day job and do this full time is absolutely the right one. I suspect that this may well be one of those sets that people claim to have been at.
There's time for a drink and a catch up after the set, Ninebarrow are as high as the hills they are named after, it is fair to say they are, to use the football parlance, over the moon.
Having missed the start to Eliza Carthy and her Wayward Band, I take the opportunity to take a wander around the site and see what is happening at some of the smaller venues around Cherry Hinton Hall. As it happens I seem to have wandered through during a change over so keep walking towards the Den. I bump into a couple of friends by the duck pond and join them in an icecream.
For me one of the important things about a festival is how the downtime, social side works, at Cambridge is excellent, strange segway coming up, also excellent at Cambridge are the award winning toilets, clean, well stocked with loo roll and if an idiot does make a mess, it's quickly cleaned up, Cambridge Folk Festival does its best to make sure nothing distracts you from the main event.