Following my visit to Hitchin last Sunday, it was great to see another local folk club popular, friendly, well-organised and generally thriving. And, not least, providing us with some really excellent music.

Cambridge Folk Club has moved around a bit over the years, and even more so over the last few weeks, with its current regular venue The Golden Hind undergoing refurbishment. For this week only, the Club inhabited St. Luke’s Church on Victoria Road. Not the church hall, the actual church. It was an impressive and not inappropriate venue for what could be regarded as music which exudes a spiritual depth in its joys and its sorrows. Certainly it makes an interesting, and perhaps refreshing, change from the usual pub venues for folk, although I don’t think I’d want the Club to meet in a church every week, especially as drinks could not be brought beyond the entrance hall. Next week, by contrast, Cambridge Folk Club meets in Romsey Labour Club.

Opening act Bryony Lemon (once of No I.D.) gave us an excellent set of Celtic tunes, on button accordion, well assisted by fiddler Alex and sister Grace on uilleann pipes. It was heartening to hear traditional music sounding so vital, to hear the brilliance of its melodies brought out to fill our souls. The trio make traditional music seem not a recherché interest but a natural and deep pleasure. I doubt that Bryony will be just a supporting act for much longer.

Uiscedwr are a prime example of folk music at its best. They are the band you want to point to and say ‘this is folk music. This is why I like it.’ If anyone listens to Uiscedwr and doesn’t care for what they hear, then fair enough, folk music isn’t for them. The Welsh, Irish and English band also derive their sound from Celtic traditional music (their name means ‘water’ in Irish and Welsh), although the majority of their numbers are self-written.

Each member of the band exuded an air of relaxed pleasure in their music, deriving surely from an ease and confidence in themselves and each other, and in the charm and power of their repertoire. The focal point is the gently vivacious Anna Esslemont, whose sweet, evocative fiddle sounds are at the centre of Uiscedwr, while her vocals top off some of the numbers gracefully. Cormac Byrne delivers outstandingly on bodhran, contributing an exciting extra layer of complex energy, while new recruit James Hickman provides some pleasing guitar. It was a treat to hear the wonderful accordionist Karen Tweed – whom you might remember from The Poozies – as a guest member of the band. Karen is the epitome of calm, unostentatious musical virtuosity. She added considerable richness to the musical texture.

It was evening that made one want to proclaim loudly just how good folk music is. Although the turn-out was very good by folk club standards, this music ought to reach far, far more people. But let’s be grateful to great players like Uiscedwr and Bryony Lemon for bringing this humane musical treasury so utterly, excitingly alive, and to organisations such as Cambridge Folk Club for enabling them to do so.

* Anna Esslemont talked about her recent experience of aplastic anaemia, which resulted in a life-threatening but successful bone marrow transplant. Hence she is well aware of the value of blood and bone marrow donations, and the band actively support these (literally) vital causes, to which many of us can contribute crucially:

www.blood.co.uk

www.blood.co.uk/pages/marrow_info.html