Camericana
Americana, as defined by the Americana Music Association, is: "music that honors and is derived from the traditions of American roots music. It is music inspired by American culture traditions which is not only represented in classic man made / roots based sounds but also through new and contemporary artists whose music is clearly inspired by these great traditions. It is a great genre, vast, like jazz which encompasses a wide range of music." Now, if you change the AMA's definition very slightly by deleting 'American' you would have a pretty good definition of the Cambridge Folk Festival - Camericana maybe?
The first Americana radio chart was published on 20th January 1995 and No Depression (the now defunct bi-monthly magazine but now web based) printed its first edition in September 1995. But in 1991 I was disappointed that Steve Earle was not going to be playing the Cambridge Folk Festival due to 'other commitments'. His place was taken by Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore - I then heard about the Flatlanders. Another Flatlander - Joe Ely - had played the year before. In 1989 Nanci Griffith played (her 1993 album Other Voices ¦ Other Rooms, introduced to many of the songwriters I now love). In 1988 it was Guy Clark and in 1987 John Prine. 
The Cambridge Folk Festival was Americana before Americana was Americana and 2012 was something of a vintage year for the genre.
Over the years I've seen ahab as a four piece plus backing singers, stripped down to the core of Dave Burn and Callum Adamson and now back up to a four piece (plus drummer). Their support slot on Bellowhead's tour last year undeniably proved that they belong on a big stage but their set in the club tent was lacking a little and they didn't fire as I know they can. A lacklustre cover of everybody's favourite bluegrass sing-a-long 'Wagon Wheel' didn't help but their four part harmonies sounded sweet.
Billy Bragg is not the most obvious choice of an Americana artist but this was not any ordinary Bragg show, it was specially curated to mark the 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie; one of the founding fathers of the genre who pre-dates even this festival. As was to be expected stage two was rammed for this and the sound set up means that while you can hear singing and playing from outside the marquee the speech quality is not so good. As Bragg has never been one for just singing and the introductions can last as long as the songs there were prolonged periods of near silence. What I could hear sounded more lecture than concert and, as most of his set came from the first two Mermaid Avenue albums (released in 1998 and 2000) this was preaching to the converted.
It would be fair to say that a Cambridge crowd have heard of Woody Guthrie. The songs were, obviously, sublime; 'Aginst th' law' and 'All You Fascists' are as relevant today as when they were written in the 1940's and 50's. It was a little surprising that Bragg chose to end with a re-working of 'Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards' rather than one of Guthrie's more famous numbers but "The Revolution is just a Steve Ovett tee-shirt away" was as good a line as I heard for the whole weekend.
Friday nights headliner (and for me, the festival's headliner) was John Prine. Prine first appeared at Cambridge alongside the late Steve Goodman in 1973, I first saw him nineteen years later in 1992 and he also played in 1987 and 2002. I'm not enough of a statistician to know exactly where this places him in the all time appearance list but he must be somewhere near the top and probably the top of international artists. With only an hour on stage it was never going to be possible for Prine to play all my favourite songs, he could have done an hour every evening plus an afternoon matinee and I would probably still wandered back to my tent Sunday evening muttering "he didn't do the song about the happy enchilada" such is the quantity of quality songs he has written. 'Spanish Pipe Dream', 'The Torch Singer' and 'Wanda Had a Baby' were all performed with the minimum of fuss and a lightness of touch. 'Souvenirs' was dedicated to the memory of Steve Goodman and Bonnie Raitt thanked for popularising 'Angel of Montgomery'. It was the only track that I was slightly disappointed with and only because I find it hard to imagine the song with out Raitt's soaring vocal when she sings "how the hell can a person / go to work in the morning / come home in the evening / and have nothing to say". When he played the epic 'Lake Marie' I though it unlikely that it would be topped - but it was. Prine was joined by Gretchen Peters straight from her appearance on stage 2 for the set finale 'Paradise'. I do hope he returns to these shores very soon.