We look ahead to a handful of highlights on the 2024 Cambridge Folk Festival line up.

Reasons to celebrate a festival that’s (a) still going in the light of many high profile cancellations, (b) as we mentioned last year, is five years older than Glasto and (c) has some belting highlights amongst a stacked bill for 2024.

At the risk of hacking off anyone on or off the bill or anyone whose favourite we’ve missed, here’s what we’re starred on the programme as a ‘must see’ with a significantly strong feel to Friday night. An evening headlined by Robert Plant and his Saving Grace featuring Suzi Dian project. A band we witnessed earlier this year in Blackburn on a night off reviewing duties. And Planty and his band were brilliant. His 2024 voice matched perfectly to the choice of material that lies in the Americana/roots bracket in the traditions of his work with Alison Krauss, the Band Of Joy and Sensational Space Shiftless, you can expect the odd crowd pleasing Zep gesture. However, now in his mid seventies, just take the chance to admire an artist who’s very comfortable doing exactly what he wants.

Raghu Dixit is another on the radar having been a highlight on the Underneath The Stars Festival line up back in 2017. His website calls him a musician “often seen as the pioneer of independent music in India,” yet whatever label(s) anyone may want to attach,

Fantastic Negrito lit up Cambridge back in 2017 with his intoxicating concoction of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Blues and Funk delivered with a preacher’s passion. We could dare say that Cambridge didn’t quite know what hit it. Forewarned is forearmed for 2024 and armed with his White Jesus Black Problems album and his latest hairstyle, Mister Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz will be preaching his message of love and harmony.

And the big question – will Talisk get everyone in the tent bouncing like they did in 2019 with Mohsin Amini atop a monitor encouraging general recklessness and wild abandon? The line up may have undergone some change, but Mohsen is still stage front and centre with possibly the tightest pants seen in Cambridge this century.

The Hack-Poets Guild we saw briefly in Matt & Phreds jazz club at the 2023 Manchester Folk Festival/English Folk Expo, and featuring Marry Waterson, Nathaniel Mann and Lisa Knapp. Their Blackletter Garland album is a wonderful exploration of folklore given rustic treatments, often to devastating effect. Perfectly suited to intimate gatherings and rooms, their transition to bigger stages should amplify the message.

And while we’re getting excited about the prospect, we should also highlight a couple of things happening on Stage 3…

Frankie Archer seems a regular on our pages, attracting our attention with her live performances and Moray-eque take on how to present Folk music in a way that says the future is bright. She also has an October tour lined up so what better advert than a winning slot at CFF.

The Windred-Wornes sisters who make up Charm Of Finches, have just released Marlinchen In The Snow and toured around their increasingly popular market of the UK – one of the reasons they make regular trips from Australia. Not to mention the vintage shops… Their seductive contemporary chamber folk – we called it “a pre-Raphaelite construction” – will provide a genteel interval to proceedings.

A band local to us in the North West, we have to flag up Harp & A Monkey, who we’ve not seen perform in a-g-e-s. From War Stories to The Victorians, they bring history to musical life with an unusual combination of the digging deep into dusty tomes to inform their quirky renderings.

Check out Talisk at CFF – “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone rock out that hard on a concertina“:

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