Home Festival Review 2011

Intimate, homely, and not a mudbath in sight…

As might be expected of one of the new kids on the festival block, the Home Festival at Dartington Hall has grown since last year. The main stage has shifted to the picturesque Elizabethan courtyard, there are now two days of music and happenings, and perhaps inevitably, there are also more opportunities to spend your money. The formula, however, remains much the same. There’s a strong bias towards acoustic music, an eclectic mix of international acts, and almost uniquely these days – outside of the odd village pub – a rare chance to hear music unamplified.

Rather less welcome was the chance to hear it unrehearsed. The Sitar Funk Ensemble, headed by Sheema Mukherjee, offered an ‘improvisational’ jumble of sitar, drums, keyboards and tablas, with the drummer doggedly thrashing out a 4/4 while Ms Mukherjee (sitar) and Mittal Purohit (tablas) undertook something rather more ambitious and exotic in the rhythm department.

For a breath of fresh air, you could have done no better than catch the enchanting Jackie Oates in the secret garden – a small natural amphitheatre in the green and pleasant grounds of Dartington Hall. Supported by Tristan Seume’s stylish guitar playing, Oates’s mellifluous vocals and heartfelt fiddle work delivered as magical and as apposite a performance as any of the weekend.

Other Britfolk offerings included Martha Tilston, playing the main stage with her characteristic charm and energy, and effortlessly encapsulating topics into songs that are personal yet accessible, whether it’s the banality of the cube farm in ‘Artificial’ or the enigmatic allure of Leonard Cohen in ‘OId Tom Cat’.

Tamikrest from Mali undertook the ambitious role of transporting the Touareg tradition from the Saharan wastes to the rolling Devon hills, and finding in the process that the sesh – the traditional Touareg turban – is as effective in excluding greenfly as Saharan sand. Melding rootsy African blues with reggae, funk and heaven knows what else, it was not difficult to imagine their vibrant, rebellious music as a backdrop to the Arab spring.

Dishing up a different but no less compelling brand of hybridity were Alejandro Toledo and the Magic Tombolinos, a hugely energetic five-piece ensemble whose fusions of Balkan Gypsy with Latin, Middle East and European classical traditions captured the spirit of the festival as distinctively as the sound. Also on the world music front, and hailing from slightly further east, the Perunika Trio from Bulgaria demonstrated admirably that musicians can stay deeply rooted in a single musical tradition and still sound fresh and captivating. Heading the bill was Suzanne Vega, an artist of no small distinction and accomplishment, and author of some of the few memorable songs to emerge from the acoustic wastelands of the 80s. Her voice, warm and agile still, wrapped itself comfortably around the crowd-pleasers, with ‘Lukal ‘Tom’s Diner ‘Marlene On The ‘Wall’ and the evergreen, plaintive ‘Gypsy’ interspersed with some lively and creative new material – more than ample to reassure Vega fans that the lady is a long way yet from becoming her own tribute act.

It was given to Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita to close the show, late in the evening – not with a rousing finale on the main stage but with a sensitive, unamplifled set in the evocative, oak-vaulted surroundings of the Great Hall. Keita’s uncluttered, Iyrical songs and gentle Casamance rhythms found a ready, responsive audience, with the many remaining festivalgoers still feeling very much at home.

Noel Harvey
Acoustic Magazine October 2011