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Musicport Festival

Venue: Whitby Pavillion
Town: Whitby
Date: 18-20/10/13
Website: http://www.musicportfestival.com/

I wasn't a huge fan of the most of the Tuareg music I had heard to date, finding it a little, dare I say, dreary. Having heard a track by Tamikrest on Radio 3 recently I was pretty sure that my prejudice was going to be challenged by their appearance at the Festival. As indeed it was - blown away totally in fact! Their female vocalist's use of ululation and the band's subtle but effective accelerandos drove the music forward and raised the emotional temperature in a way I hadn't previously experienced with other Tuareg bands. Awesome - and a very hard act to follow. London based Los Chinches did their best with lively Peruvian rhythms and the I am sure that Tantz who were appearing later would have also been up to the job but by this time we had to admit defeat and headed back to our base for much needed sleep.

We dragged ourselves out early on Sunday morning to ensure we saw the whole of Mestisa's set on the North Sea Stage. I had seen half of this quartet at the Shuttle Shuffle Festival in Bradford in August and was mightily impressed. Their music ranges across much of South and Central America and is performed with a charm and panache that is nothing short of inspirational - a perfect start to the last day of the Festival. Boff Whalley then maintained the good humour of the audience with a mixture of tales of his life on the road with Chumbawamba, an explanation of his passion for running and digressions into mass trespass and pantheism (oh and several of his excellent songs too).

In a piece of clever programming (or was it just co-incidence?) the next artists, Plumhall, had recently had a song written for them by Boff ('Learning How to Talk') which featured in their superb set along with their own excellent material which never fails to bring a smile to my face (as readers of some of my previous reviews will be aware!) It was gratifying, if perfectly predictable, to see that they were received just as warmly by the rest of the audience and hopefully added a significant number of potential new customers for their long awaited CD. With the final song 'Never Forget My Name' still reverberating around the mind it was with somewhat unseemly haste that we headed off to the Main Stage to catch the second half of Maia's set. I tried to describe this band's music in my review of last year's Musicport but failed miserably. Despite having seen a whole set recently at the Aire Do Festival in Keighley as well as the latter half of this one, I am still lost for words. Weird but totally wonderful there seems little doubt that they are headed for great things. The band were visibly moved by their standing ovation but there is no doubt that they deserved it.

So far it had been a tremendous day and the Orchestra that Fell to Earth continued the trend with a nostalgic reminder of the music of Simon Jeffes and the Penguin Café Orchestra including my favourite 'Music for a Found Harmonium'. Remarkably the original ringing / engaged tone that featured on the recording of 'Telephone and Rubber Band' has survived from its origins on tape, through an incarnation on CD, and is now stored on a USB stick. Surely a musical artefact worth preserving on whatever formats emerge in the future!

After a lively performance from Bradford based street band the Peace Artistes it was time for one of the artists I had been particularly looking forward to - Sevdah singer Amira Medunjanin. Amira's amazing soulful voice was accompanied by two incredibly talented musicians on bass and piano who set the songs in a jazz context that didn't always fully work for me despite the undoubted virtuosity. Nevertheless it was a pretty special 75 minutes and another standing ovation was well earned.

As on Saturday there was simply no time to have an evening meal as the Jon Palmer Acoustic Band were holding court downstairs and, as always when I have seen them, they were going down a storm with their dynamic brand of good time roots rock. Sadly I ended up missing most of Guinean rooted Ballet Nimba who both sounded and looked captivating when I returned to the Main Stage. Arifa who followed were without their oud player due to visa problems but the remaining three musicians still managed to thread an intricate (and, in the case of the first piece, very long) musical tapestry of piano, percussion and clarinet which made me search out their new CD on return home.

I was unsure about the wisdom of having a comedian as the last act of the weekend but somehow it seemed to work. Neil Innes set was patchy with the patter being far more amusing than the songs but there were some hilarious moments none of which, probably fortunately for future audiences, I can recall in detail at this distance. Whatever, the crowd seemed happy and receptive and, as we approached the end of the evening, there was for me a sudden awareness of the joy of shared experience and memory. As always there had been so much going on that I missed - films, workshops, DJ sets, songwriters circles - that I desperately wanted to have my time here over again.

The unique spell that Musicport weaves over a weekend in autumn is not just created by the music, though that is very magical indeed - it is also cast by the community that comes together for a time in the way that one day hopefully the people of the world must join to share, to smile, to understand and ultimately to love.

Joe Grint