Green Man Festival, Crickhowell, Wales, August 17-20 2023

This year's Green Man Festival, known for its indie and alternative folk-rock-skewed line-ups, boasted an encouraging influx of African bands. Kanda Bongo Man led the best of these, relishing the prime-time slot of an 11.45am kick-off on the main Mountain Stage. This might sound, superficially, a bottom-of-the-bill placement, but this is the hour when everyone rouses themselves, converging around the ultra-scenic spread of this natural amphitheatre, the majesty of the Brecon Beacons rising on all sides. Also, the sun was beaming on this Sunday afternoon, following the weekend’s rainy spells. Congolese singer KBM rose to the occasion, playing a highlight set, benefiting from a pristine crystal sound balance, showcasing gloriously separated gleaming guitar play and enormous basslines. He was flanked by his joyfully harmonising co-singers, and all was perfection. The songs built up to move us, softly balladesque, but ultimately arriving at a scintillating motion.

All of these Afro-artists were given prime afternoon slots on the Mountain Stage, an ideal time to encourage dancing, while there’s still space to move. The Green Man evenings tend to get rockier and increasingly crowd-dense. Etran de L’Aïr are one of the more rugged Saharan rock combos, hailing from Agadez, Niger. They too produced a masterful interlocking for dancing, with bass and drums harking back to that classic stomping Zimbabwean sound of the 1980s. This might be desert rock, but we can also hear soukous in the blend. It’s the distorted guitars that remain resolutely Saharan, in a faster bluesy manifestation than many folks might know. 

Dur-Dur Band International fared less well, working their way through several featured vocalists. Each singer was an improvement, as the set progressed, but the most exciting combination arrived when the instrumentalists began their group voicings. The final 20 minutes was the best stretch. The Dur-Dur Int line-up featured guitars, saxophone, keyboards, percussion, bass and drums, peaking with a Somalian reggae finale.

The Jamaican reggae crooner Horace Andy bettered his performance at WOMAD the previous month, jettisoning the rawk guitar solos and diving deep into the roots-dub zone. Andy’s songs had a completely different feel here, much more in tune with the main body of his recorded work. Once again, this was a Mountain Stage set, this time at 7.15pm, well populated with swaying revellers.

Indeed, much of the Songlines-adjacent action happened on the Mountain, as Lankum unwound their portentous ambient folk balladry. Their songbook lately sounds coated with electronics, but much of this atmosphere is in reality shaped by heightened acoustic drones, a sensitivity to layering harmonics, with harmonium, pipes and cello. Lankum’s general alternative vocal delivery also marks them out beyond the fence of the folkish mainstream.

Lankum (© Patrick Gunning)

Yasmin Williams opened up the Saturday on the Mountain, 11.45am, when the crowd could give its full concentration, as this Virginia native played detailed acoustic guitar compositions, full of folk-blues embellishments. Half the time, she’d lay her guitar on her lap, adopting a zither approach, one new tune having her run fast rhythms while picking out an equally speedy solo line. Hillbilly country also makes an appearance, with a Doc Watson number. Occasionally, Williams also used a tiny hammer on the sound-hole zone, or attached a kalimba to the guitar body, delicately ringing and tingling. She also wore tap shoes for extra percussion.

Durham, North Carolina songster Jake Xerxes Fussell also brought together folk, country and blues, with well-crafted words when he sang a sea shanty about a mule. His guitar style is slow and easy, fully rounded, beneath his deep vocals. He sings about fresh fish with occasional diamonds in their mouths, and repeats ‘wake up woman, take your big leg offa mine…’.

There wasn’t much rootsiness in the Walled Garden, but Delhi-via-Brooklyn modular synth player Arushi Jain matched ambient cascades with an Indian devotional sound, getting into cosmic dhrupad seepage, and spreading a truly calming aura around the gathered.

Inside the Cinedrome tent, London folkster collective Broadside Hacks were set to interpret the music of The Wicker Man, prior to a 50th anniversary screening of the movie. Ultimately, they presented a pleasing set, but the occasion was marred in the extreme by one of the most inept soundchecks ever witnessed by your scribe. The line-up was mostly acoustic, with guitars, trombone, clarinet, fiddle, squeezebox and voices, so it’s difficult to understand why the audience had to endure around 30 minutes of severe feed-back torture. It was a relief to eventually appreciate the set, but the mood had been severely polluted.

There were some ‘secret’ discoveries inside the always-reliably varied Chai Wallahs tent. Gringo Ska’s drummer is one of the festival’s site managers, but also leads this exceptional outfit, dedicated to the oldest roots of the music. No expansions or extensions, just a warm trundle of Skatalites (‘Storm Warning’), Tommy McCook and a Welsh original in ‘Green Man Blues’. Gringo Ska exuded liveliness with substance, a mixed-age membership offering raspy tenor saxophone solos, flighty flute and rolling bass, with their guitarist introducing the tunes. It sounds like they work together regularly, forming tight bonds. No messin’ about, just dedicated ska accuracy. Also in Chai Wallahs, Los Dedos leapt into the Bristolian-South American surf-rock arena, twanging out another set that sent shockwaves through a totally receptive crowd, demonstrating the acceptable face of audience participation during ‘March Of The Crabs’.

Of course, outside of the Songlines realms, there were a whole other bunch of inspiring performances from the likes of Devo, Goat and Salami Rose Joe Louis, for instance…