Best in British Folk (From Gazette Series)

Best in British Folk

THE tenth Cheltenham Folk Festival (February 9-12) will be a weekend of warm and wild music, enough to tempt us all to abandon our mid-winter blues.

With ceilidhs on both the Friday and the Saturday nights, plus a series of concerts that runs from 7.45pm on Friday to 10.15pm on Sunday, almost without pause, there is bound to be something for all tastes.

The patron of this year's festival is Eliza Carthy, daughter of Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy, musicians who have been prominent on the English folk scene for more than 30 years. Eliza was born into folk, a music that is, she reminds us, authentically British: the pop music of 100 years ago, which also has important stories to tell.

The Carthys, Waterson and Tim Van Eyken form Waterson:Carthy one of Britain's most popular folk bands who will be playing a concert which also features Tom Napper and Tom Bliss on the Saturday night.

At the other end of the folk spectrum are BELLOWhead, winners of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Best Live Act in 2005. They are an 11-piece band who present an eclectic mixture of strings, pipes, percussion and brass.

Visiting the festival from abroad will be a three-part female vocal group, The Wailin' Jennys from Winnipeg, Canada, and The Warsaw Village Band, from Poland who won the BBC3 World Music Award in 2004. They describe themselves as a hard-core folk band playing fiddles, hurdy-gurdies, trumpets, drums, zithers and jews-harps with female vocalists.

During the festival there will also be more intimate, unplugged performances by many of the performers; craft activities and a market. On the Sunday afternoon the streets of Cheltenham will come alive with dance teams performing through the town.

It seems funny that so many people think that the folk music of these islands is not something that would interest them. Why do we always look to other cultures for authentic, acoustic music and ignore our own?

Tickets for the festival are available from the Town Hall, Cheltenham.