FESTIVAL REVIEW: Sidmouth Folk Week 2016

Sidmouth Folk Week

Sidmouth Folk Week, tucked away down in Devon, is a weeklong celebration of folk music, dance and culture that literally takes over the entire sleepy town in a wave of colourful trousers, questionable footwear and the constant ringing of Morris bells that will pretty much come to haunt your dreams by the end of the week. You could never be stalked by a Morris Dancer, especially if you had spent a week in Sidmouth – a reassuring thought, isn’t it?

Morris bells aside, Sidmouth did not disappoint this year, as it has not done any year that I have attended it. We’ve been rude about Morris already but we don’t really mean it; you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a Morris dance off, or watched one of the teams armed with wooden sticks that hit each other so hard you wonder if part of the dance is to try and break each other’s wrists.

We’ve gone off on a Morris tangent but Sidmouth is about so much more than that. The music this year was as excellent as it always is. The whole town pulsed with it, from 9.30am when the workshops for the early birds started until gone 1am when the last ceilidh ended in the Bulverton (known affectionately to us as the ‘party tent’). This marquee, perched on the top of a hill next to the official campsite, hosted some of the most intense events of the week. Some of the highlights included Shooglenifty, a Scottish band who played early in the week and set the tone for the whole madcap, energetic Bulverton line up, and The Monster Ceilidh Band, our new favourites, who played a gig with so much upbeat enthusiasm that we managed to forget that there was almost literally a monsoon raging outside which had ruined much of the day. Seth Lakeman played later in the week to a packed out Bulverton, so busy that we could barely get in the door, drawing people up the hill who had probably never set foot in there before.

If the Bulverton was a hotbed of crazy energy, The Ham – the main venue – played host to a slightly calmer kind of show. It was here that we saw Show of Hands, one of the biggest names in folk and Sidmouth patrons, who are always effortlessly brilliant. Earlier that same day we discovered Effra, a London born group of three guys who clearly love what they do; their chilled out vibe and the way they played with melodies, starting out with minimalism and building slowly, really charmed us. The Ham also featured Jon Boden, formerly of Bellowhead, who was without a doubt the highlight of the week for us. He held the crowd for over an hour and a half, alone on stage with his plethora of instruments, and despite an issue with the sound that resulted in strange banging noises throughout the show. It was a politically charged evening – he is very annoyed about Brexit – but filled with a mixture of songs from Bellowhead, traditional folk tunes and songs from Boden’s solo career. He came back for two encores at the end – the first time we have ever seen this happen at Sidmouth.

Big names aside, a huge number of smaller, hot bands played in the smaller venues. Shout out to Threepenny Bit, who played a ceilidh that had people up and dancing despite the pouring rain, and Against The Grain, a percussion and guitar group who we have decided should write the music for a Disney film, so catchy and upbeat their sound is. Another thing Sidmouth does well is give young performers a platform, and we spent a wonderful evening at one of their showcases for up and coming musicians; we particularly enjoyed the sound of Jekyll and Hyde, a group of three boys taking traditional tunes and giving them a new edge, and Molly Evans, a singer and fiddle player with a haunting voice who held the audience captivated.

If, somehow, you managed to be bored with the music or dancing, there were a thousand other things you could do. There was an excellent craft market that we spent many hours browsing and the promenade is taken over for the week by a legion of little stalls selling everything from Fairtrade clothing to friendship bracelets, handmade wooden spoons to dreamcatchers. It is possible to spend a lot of money at Sidmouth. A LOT.

We found the time to attend two of the informational talks laid on during the week; one on the composer and collector of folk songs, George Butterworth, and another on gender fluidity in folk tales. The demographic for these talks was definitely older and we felt a little fish out of water, but they were genuinely excellent and held our attention for a long hour and a half (especially the Butterworth talk, which started at 9.30am, the time we were usually dragging ourselves out of bed). It is a shame that more young people don’t take advantage of these talks but, then again, they do feel quite niche and tend to happen at inconvenient times in the day (9.30? On a holiday?) It is no one’s fault that young people don’t attend these events but it is surely something that will need to be looked at in the future, when the young people become just ‘the people’.

As for facilities, Sidmouth always caters well for the vast crowds. The main campsite is clean and well kept, even if it is very basic. The showers and toilets, the most important part of any camping experience, are not horrific to use, which is really all you can ask for when it comes to festival facilities. Down in the town, the festival brings in lots of catering that offers a big choice for attendees. We had a particularly delicious dinner at the Dartmoor Kitchen, which offers their popular pies or a selection of other meals. I really enjoyed the spinach and sage lasagne, a portion that was so big I had to take a good quarter of it back to the campsite for a midnight snack. Of course, being in the town, all of the local businesses take advantage of the massive influx of visitors and are open from early morning to late night. We had breakfast every morning at the Sailing Club, a kitchen run efficiently by volunteers who always had a smile for their customers and felt like new friends by the end of the week. Some of them even remembered us from last year, and that is part of the magic of Sidmouth; people are so loyal to the event that you see the same ones again and again.

The whole week rounded off with the traditional parade of the dancers and fireworks out in the harbour. We think something may have gone a bit awry with the parade – there were a lot of people in the reflective vests of volunteers running up and down – but it did not matter much. The mood was upbeat anyway and everyone loves fireworks, right?

All in all, Sidmouth Folk Week once more lived up to its reputation for zany brilliance and transformed that little town into a hubbub of noise, sharing and performance. At no other place in the world would it not be weird to take part in a singalong on a bus at 11.30 at night, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Written with Cat Tarrant

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