Robin Denselow concludes his review of last week’s Cambridge folk festival (Robert Plant thrills, Peggy Seeger inspires and Oysterband rock, 29 July) by saying “it should concern the English folk scene that English traditional music had so little representation at our best-known folk festival”. If anything, that is an understatement. With numerous Scottish names billed and a programming manager with a background in American festivals, it was fence‑to-fence Scottish music and “Americana”, becoming little more than a satellite of Glasgow’s annual Celtic Connections.
Might it be possible for the Guardian to cast its reviews coverage a little wider to help redress this? For example, in August it is the 70th anniversary of the huge annual Sidmouth folk festival in Devon, not only a thriving celebration of a wide range of song and dance traditions but one that involves far more young people than Cambridge. Or East Anglia’s FolkEast, which annually presents the more adventurous evolving artists who continue to make traditionally based music exciting and relevant.
Cambridge is only “our best-known folk festival” because it became so in the 1970s. Mystifyingly the media continues to treat it as such, ignoring the hundreds of others. It’s an impressive event, but it’s certainly not representative of the folk movement as a whole.
Ian A Anderson
Cambridge
• Your review of the Cambridge folk festival references the Incredible String Band as the source of Bid You Goodnight. I think Robert Plant would be the first to acknowledge that the source was Joseph Spence, possibly with the Pinder family, and they themselves would have said that it was a hymn they had always known.
Joel Griffiths
Eastburn, West Yorkshire
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