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Bournemouth Folk Festival

Venue: BIC
Town: Bournemouth
Date: 23rd-24th March
Website: http://www.bournemouthfolkfestival.co.uk

Friday

It was time for real switch of styles next with a move to Korasong Radio, who has the name implies are a world music band and in this case, that's quite a range of music. One of the songs they perform is a series of songs that have been blended for songs that are over five hundred years old, one from the Gambia, an English folk song, a Latin Song and a Celtic song. It's a performance piece that really does emphasise the universal nature of music.

It also shows that music does need to be adapted, blended and fused sometimes to keep it fresh and live and vibrant, that's why some songs survive half a millennia and some songs are forgotten after five minutes, maybe Alex Roberts is right, songs do have a way of finding people.

The thing that really strikes you most about Korasong Radio is the vocal interplay between the three main protagonists, Rebecca Askew, Jeremy Avis(Who it was announced would be doing a singing workshop on the Saturday) and Surahata Susso. The band were described in the programme as a three piece, but they had a bass player along in tow.

Korasong Radio are a band that seem to absorb themselves in their playing. Looks and inter changes between the musicians gave the impression of a band that were totally at one with what they were doing. Some of the songs have a show feel about them and it didn't come as a surprise to discover that the band have been involved in creating large stage shows and operas

This really is what world music should be about, a blending of cultural identities into a bigger ideal and yet retaining the individual identities of the individual parts. Bournemouth Folk Festival should be congratulated for including acts like Korasong Radio into the mix.

It was back to a more conventionally rooted sound for the headliners on the night, Urban Folk Quartet, well if any act featuring larger than life fiddle player and larger than life, multi-instrumentalist, Joe Broughton could ever be described as conventional. I'm not it could be applied to any band that ends a song with a triangle solo played by percussionist Tom Chapman lying on his stomach, guitarist and oud player Frank Moon lying on his back and Joe and the other fiddle player Paloma Tigras on their knees. This is band that understands showmanship.

Yes there is a definite novelty element to their performance, but it's one that enhances the show rather than detract from it. You have to be at the absolute top of your game to carry out activity like this.

They are a band that it's easy to dance to, even if they are playing to a predominantly chair dancing audience. They achieved the nearest any band has got to getting me dancing to any music in pretty much a decade, although that was partly because Paloma physically went into the audience and got people up on their feet dancing.

Urban Folk Quartet have a number of World influences in the band, Paloma hails from Galicia, Frank, Cornwall and Joe & Tom, England. Their music draws from that Celtic belt of Northern Spain and pretty much sweeps trough English folk music and other Celtic influences as well as those of the likes of Canada where the sound has already taken on it's own local flavours.

This was top draw entertainment, the band were having so much fun the barely plugged their recently launched "Off Beaten Track" album. They had dancing and they had rapturous applause and being the last band of the night they could come back and perform the much called for encore.

And with that the first night of the second Bournemouth Folk Festival came to an end. It definitely looks like the decision to expand out an extra day was the right one and thanks to the Festival team for that.

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