Music / Reviews
Review: Bristol Folk Festival – ‘Community, inclusion and an overwhelming feeling that everything is OK’
There are balloons in the sky above the cathedral on the first night of this year’s Bristol Folk Festival. That symbol of everything that’s great about this city – the freedom, the wonder, the dizzy sense of fun – seems entirely appropriate for the start of what many consider Bristol’s best musical weekend.
Powerhouse director of the festival (and all round whirling polymath) Dr Anna Rutherford says in her opening address that: “We are here, together, tending the green shoots of ‘better’”.
Bristol Folk Festival 2026 is a celebration of all of the best things.
View this post on Instagram
For several years now one of those ‘best things’ has been Bristol’s Heartwood Chorus; the traditional festival openers never disappoint. 40-odd strong but at turns feather light, heartbreakingly subtle and utterly roof raising, Heartwood are glorious.
A standout is their version of Chris Wood’s Walk This World With Music, a heart-swell of a song that begins with a delicate sweep before those voices fill this huge space.
This evening marks a return to gigging for sisterly harmonisers the Staves who are languid of strum and impeccable of voice, bringing the sunshine with them. The holy waterfall harmonies of Make it Holy fill the church while layers ping pong off the walls for All Now. It looks simple but is thrilling.
With Heartwood Chorus and the Staves, Friday in the cathedral becomes a celebration of voices.
Jess and Camilla of the Staves in Bristol Cathedral – photo: Paul Blakemore
After the majesty of the cathedral, the Architect offers some late night revelry. Bristol duo Bowker & Morse are in full flow with their own brilliant songs and some trad favourites as most of Heartwood Chorus and others stroll across Pero’s Bridge.
Within moments it becomes clear that, while the festival loves the big acts, it’s the community found in a small bar filled with singers, chatterers and laughter that is the heartbeat of this weekend.
The unaccompanied duo’s two voices complement perfectly, weaving layers around us. And it is with one of Lizzi Morse’s songs that true magic happens. Ain’t I A Woman takes Sojourner Truth as its starting point and blossoms. All of the voices in the bar reach out to Morse, thrumming and buzzing, joining her in the chorus.
The room pulses until Morse has to pinch away tears. Voices are so important this evening and we have just been part of the sublime.
View this post on Instagram
Rather than balloons on Saturday there’s the threat of that other Bristol staple – lots of rain. NBut no matter because there’s so much good music to see. St George’s kicks off with another Bristol treat, Siân Magill’s dream-folk project Âellin.
The band send spidery jazz skittering across spooky folk landscapes. There are brushed drums and the crackle and burble of electronics, snatches of vocal loops and splintered guitar shards.
This is no foliage tinged dream, rather the cut-out silhouette of a folkloric nightmare. Âellin experiment, tinker and bend folk music into wonderfully odd shapes.
After that Robbie Cavanagh is a pretty straightforward Country-ish singer-songwriter. But every Folk Festival needs a troubadour and he fits the bill perfectly. He fiddles with a radio playing old-time country, mixes drinks, bashes away at an acoustic guitar, has a fine line in practised patter and the most beautiful, honey-coloured voice imaginable.
His songs are, of course, about loving, leaving and loss but they are so heartfelt that it’s hard not to fall in love with them. Last song Hopeless is taken from latest album Tough Love, and a better slice of Country Soul you could not wish to find.
Sam Sweeney played at Downend Folk & Roots in February – photo: Barry Savell
The afternoon’s headliner Sam Sweeney, backed by Louis Campbell on guitar and Ben Nicholls on bass, is welcomed back to Bristol like a conquering hero.
In a set taken from across his back catalogue, Sweeney effortlessly shows why he is the finest fiddle player in the UK right now. His control is extraordinary, the moments when he wavers right on the cusp of ecstasy exhilarating. There’s passion and joy but heartbreak and introspection too.
He tells us that St George’s is his favourite room to play in in the country and it’s so obvious that it’s true as he spins in his chair, kicks his legs out, tells us stories and is, generally, charm itself.
Sam Sweeney says St George’s, a venue he has played many times, is his favourite in the country – photo: Paul Blakemore
Saturday night starts with the utterly captivating Ellie Gowers at St George’s. She is the very model of a contemporary folk-ish singer-songwriter, with songs spanning travellers’ tales and a quiet longing, dreamy, drifty moments full of far-away twilights and vast expanses.
Gowers conjures the contrast between the pull of home and the need for adventure and wraps it up in a sunset-hued 70s folk-pop hug.
When she sticks closer to home she flips through sepia photographs of working women, long gone. Woman of the Waterways and The Ribbon Weaver are delicate character studies, as fine as a porcelain miniature, set as gentle foot-tappers.
It is, however, her voice that is show-stopping; it is high, pure and dipped in gold. As protest song, The Stars Are Ours, comes to an end, someone in the audience mutters “that’s stunning”. Well, quite.
After a swift, rain-soaked run across the road, Ye Vagabonds are finishing their set at the Beacon to a rapturous response. Dublin-based brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn are joined by cello, double bass and all manner of clever things that bring their “complicated love letters to Dublin” to life.
Mayfly starts with gorgeous unaccompanied singing but ends with the nauseous, uneasy sway of cello and double bass. Between times there’s a story of struggle and pain. It sums them up beautifully; they are complex, intelligent and utterly affecting.
By the end of the set Ye Vagabonds have 2000 people in the palm of their hands. The massed singing as Long Grass comes to an end is incredible; there’s barely a dry eye in the house.
Ye Vagabonds – photo: Paul Blakemore
All of which leads to the Unthanks, celebrating their twentieth anniversary with an extraordinary ten-piece band and some of the loveliest music around.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, quite as magical as Mount the Air in all its ten-minutes-long glory. It starts with singing then trumpet, piano, and drums follow as the four-piece string section takes flight, Rachel adds her voice and before you know it, you’re overwhelmed.
It is truly epic and sounds like Christmas. This is lush in the truest sense of the word, luxuriant and abundant; sound so full that you can almost see it. It’s all just a bit breathtaking.
The Unthanks and a ten-piece band held a full Bristol Beacon spellbound – photo: Paul Blakemore
A Whistling Woman has majesty and power, a show of female strength with a singalong chorus. The sisters are at their harmonious best on Magpie/the Scarecrow Knows, strings and harmonium lifting them to the rafters.
On King of Rome the trumpet lends a romantic sway and violins arc like birds’ wings. Romanticism is replaced by honesty and bravery on The Testimony of Patience Kershaw, where Rachel effortlessly shows the strength of a female coal miner from the 1840s.
Finally Sorrows Away casts a magic spell across the hall. It is massive, a wall of voices that start on the stage but end somewhere way back in the top tier. Hundreds of voices chasing away sadness and replacing it with something so much better.
Bristol alt-folk experimentalists Ushti closed off the night for a rowdy room of late night folkies at the Architect – photo: Rachel Ashwanden
Sunday has a delightful bank holiday feel to it, with proper freedom and a carefree spirit. There are panel discussions in the Glass Studio, Kittiwake Border Morris dancing in the foyer, and the Bristol Folk House choir singing us into a wildly well received set from Bristol based Senegalese griot Amadou Diagne.
There is community, inclusion and an overwhelming feeling that everything is OK. Anna Rutherford’s assertions for togetherness find a true home on Sunday afternoon at St George’s.
View this post on Instagram
Vulva Voce are an all female Manchester-based string quartet who take classical stylings and bend them into folk-ish shapes. Hysteria see-saws between stately baroque strings and manic sawing, ending in a scream of frustration. Flotterstone is a chilled bucolic scene, violins leaf-fall light, floating gently to earth.
The pace picks up for Weaver’s Key as plucked cello gives way to stomps and urgency. The strings fly all over the place and there’s that unmistakable feeling as joyful folk music crashes through polite classical music. The standing ovation they get is richly deserved.
The Anglo-Irish four-piece Ranagri are absolutely adored by this crowd. Drawing from the Irish tradition but with an eye on current political events they bring the afternoon to a rapturous close.
Donal Rogers has a great, rabble-rousing voice but it is the two women who flank him that utterly steal the show: flautist Eliza Marshall and harpist Eleanor Dunsdon make Ranagri something very special. They round off an afternoon of togetherness by bringing the whole place to their feet.
Ranagri get everyone up on their feet for a good stomp – photo: Ranagri
It seems that, every year, the Folk House is the place to find the hidden gem of the festival. This year it’s multi-instrumentalist Malin Lewis on fiddle, bagpipes and smallpipes.
Lewis’ debut album Halocline celebrates a world in-between, a world of acceptance; it is dreamlike and beautiful. Tonight Lewis creates their own world and invites us in.
Backed by Naomi Priestnall on fiddle and Ali Hutton on guitar, the trio are simply breathtaking. This is music to make you smile and whoop, to make you glad. And when Lewis straps on the bagpipes, it all goes off.
Small, sparkly clouds festoon the pipes which get whipped around as Lewis moves, as the music gets faster and this new world they are creating swirls around you, lashing together bits of music from the Breton tradition, Canada and Northern Europe into something glorious. Malin Lewis makes your heart full.
Even if you squint and put a finger in your ear, Sunday headliners Honeyfeet are not remotely, not even vaguely, a folk band. Does it matter? Only to a few grumbling purists. Does the rest of Bristol Folk Festival care? Not a jot. Do they get the whole place up and dancing? Oh yes.
Rioghnach Connolly has already played at the festival with jazzy folkers the Breath. Where that band allows her to show off her incredible vocal gymnastics, Honeyfeet are a different thing. There’s funk and sass, a hip-rolling groove that is utterly irresistible and Connolly’s voice is steeped in a New Orleans swamp.
View this post on Instagram
Rude trombone parps and chopped funk guitar hit you in all of those ‘dance now’ receptors while swirling keys and laid back drums keep the funk soulful. At times the band are slithery-soul cool, at others there’s almost a hint of Portishead trip-hop and some ska in the mix too.
Above all of this, though, there’s Connolly: majestic and magnificent, an absolute Queen. Sometimes she is a soul belter, sometimes a smokey chanteuse but you realise that, always, there is just a bit of the devil in her.
The set ends with Meet Me On the Corner. By then every single person is on their feet, grooving away. This might not be folk but Honeyfeet are the perfect way to end this beautifully inclusive weekend.
The balloons never returned to the skies this weekend but that didn’t matter. Bristol Folk Festival provided the freedom, the wonder, the dizzy sense of fun all by itself. Folk is a very broad church and this weekend proved that everyone can be included.
Main image: Paul Blakemore
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
