Sunday 4

Sometimes, at Cambridge you discover an artist that you just can’t get enough of. This year was just such a year and the artist in question, Mindy Smith. Having seen her in both the Club Tent and on Stage One it was now the turn of the Radio Two Stage.

Mindy comes across as very nervous. It does impact her performance. It seems to work in two ways. One of these is that she gets very jittery about her sound. It may be right, but she constantly tinkers with her foldback sound, this sometimes extends into how her songs go. There was a false start in the wrong key and a forgotten lyric which she managed to shake off with a joke about hearing the proper version on the cd.

The other impact is through her movement and stage persona. It’s jerky and not quite at ease, except when she’s fully into her songs. You forgive all of those traits for what she puts into her music.

Mindy’s mother died whilst she was still young. Mindy is still bitter about it and you can hear it in every note of the song she dedicates to her mother. This is an artists that doesn’t so much wear her heart on her sleeve, but more rips it out of her chest and places the still beating organ on the neck of her guitar.

Mindy Smith is that all too rare thing, the genuine article, the real mccoy. Mindy is able to communicate her feelings, you are drawn in like a voyeur.

Despite seeing her three times, I managed to miss the name of the mandolin player everytime, but the support he offers Mindy seems invaluable.

I lose track of time. I’m expecting at least another twenty minutes and yet it’s over.

Time to go and get some food whilst I listen to the end of Ralph McTell. Apparently he’s been joined onstage by Bert Jansch, something else I’ve missed, but the price was worth paying. I'm also in time to join in the audience participation version of 'that song'.

There's a couple of youngsters stood next to me. Neither of them had realised that Ralph had done the original, yep times they are a changing.

The next act I manage to catch properly, is Portuguese fado star Mariza.

It’s a very dramatic entrance, the music and the image conspire to create a start to a set that is both visually and aurally stunning.

I don’t understand a word that’s being sung, but somehow it doesn’t seem necessary. There is a mood here, a sense of occasion, a sense of an event. This is showmanship. Mariza comes across as a bit of a diva, but in reality she knows her craft and she knows how to get it noticed.

Between songs in faltering English, she describes how she has managed to breakdown some of the gender issues in the singing of fado. The clicking of cameras in the pits give testament to the show.

I’m entranced the sound and visual have combined to create something that bit special. I stay in the pit for as long as I can, for the first three numbers. Once I leave I listen from the side of stage. I can’t see Mariza and the music begins to lose some of it’s context, the music retains it’s quality, it just loses that whole

I would definitely like to see her perform in a small intimate venue where I think she could be completely awesome. As it was I by the end of her set, I think I was lacking a bottle of redwine and the connection that I had at the start of the set.

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