Guildford Festival (Dirty Linen)

Dirty Linen #73, 1997

Guildford Festival
Stoke Park, Guildford, England
August 1-3, 1997

In Britain these days, it seems like folk music is defined as music that generates a sense of community. American folk music hasn't been hit as hard by the dance/trance music phenomenon as music across the sea. Two major genres are taking over the British folk scene: multicultural fusion and techno music.

At the Guildford festival, you couldn't escape someone's idea of music. The concession tents blared dance beats as we hammered in our tent stakes. Throngs of henna-tattooed, Indian-cotton-clad attendees meandered around Stoke Park with TUKA-tuka-TUKA-tuka incessantly urging them to keep going. It's not very relaxing to live your life to someone else's soundtrack. I missed quite a bit of the festival because of problems at the campsite. (A hint to future Guildford attendees: Don't pitch your tent next to anyone named Patsy or Edina.) I wasn't taking the right substances to enjoy myself as much as others around me seemed to be. But I'm glad I didn't judge Afro Celt Sound System by its dull name alone, or I'd have missed one of the most vibrant and organic meldings of world and dance music in Britain today. There was a tenor singing in sean nos style, there were uillean pipes, there were synthesizers, there were African drums. Somehow it all worked.

Transglobal Underground was equally danceable, but more obviously Eastern, with some excellent kora playing, including the requisite trippy solo. The lead singer was an enthusiastic belly dancer whose chants and fringes moved the crowd.

Is it cultural piracy to use these musics in a new blend? Also featured at the festival was London's own Richard Thompson, whose music has melded Cajun, rockabilly, and numerous other influences that were hardly pure to begin with. Thompson is an unapologetic musical eclecticist, and his set included polka, middle Eastern, and jump-jive elements. He introduced "From Galway to Graceland" as a song "designed to appeal to two very disparate audiences," thus, he hoped, increasing his popularity in the southern U.S. and the Emerald Isle. Guest Christine Collister sang backup on "Sweetheart of the Barricade," from Thompson's new Industry album, about the decline of industry in Britain. Thompson's solo set was not as flashy as those of some of his fellow performers, but it proved that fusion of various musical styles is neither new nor unappealing. It also proved that a single guitar, in the right hands, can synthesize myriad sounds as adroitly and enjoyably as a studio full of machines.

--Pamela Murray Winters (Arlington, VA)