So the weekend just gone was the Cambridge Busking Festival. This was organised by Cambridge City Council – in particular many thanks go to Heather Bevan-Hunt for her efforts in making it happen. There were many great musicians and entertainers to be seen across town, from Ukeylove ukuleles and Karmadillo to ZimStrings playing their classical music and Chancellors of Vice playing their soul-funk mix. I enjoyed everything I saw.

Luckily it was a sunny day out on the streets of Cambridge, and although I had some criticism of my choice of busking socks on the Friday I think it still went well!

 

The first place I played was following Planetzim from the UkeyLove collective. These guys came up from London and we had them crashing around our place. Meant the start to the days was a bit more archaic than usual, and was already in a party mood by the time I left the place!

 

I had various slots around town on Friday and Saturday. The first day was the one that saw criticism of my socks and unfortunately no photos exist of the much better and groovier socks I was wearing the next day!

After playing a couple of the slots I had a wonder round. I don’t have the names of all the artists I caught sight of unfortunately, but the mellow world music sounds of the guys with the giant xylophones was something different and special.

Unexpectedly the place I enjoyed playing at the most was the slot at the end of Friday in St Giles Church. Slightly out of the centre of town and being indoors, it was never going to be a place to get passers by being drawn to watch, but there was a small but appreciative audience. For a start the room was cool, and the ladies running the cake sale offered some deliciously refreshing orange juice. Once ready to play the acoustics were fantastic and I would like to go back sometime and make an acoustic recording in there at some point.

There are monthly cake sales for a charity happening there as well – I’d recommend popping in and trying some of those cakes out when that happens!