Towersey is a little village in the Oxfordshire countryside that hosts one of the most bravely adventurous festivals in the folk and world music calendar. A pleasantly low-key affair, its main events took place in two large tents. One tent was for those who like to sit during concerts (one lady knitted throughout a virtuoso set by Martin and Eliza Carthy while the other tent, reached after a stroll down a country lane, was for younger audiences and dancers, and attracted a smaller crowd but some remarkable music.
This has been a great summer for music from south-east Italy, thanks to the Womad triumph of Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, with their exhilarating reworking of pizzica, the hypnotic and percussive traditional style said to cure spider bites. Nidi D'Arac looked like an indie rock band but played a furious folk-rock treatment of the music, making use of frame drums along with guitar and amplified fiddle from their two impressive female members, in a set that switched suddenly between elegant folk melodies and furious, stomping workouts. This is a band to watch.
Later, on the same stage, there was a rousing set from the Swiss Cajun exponents Mama Rosin. They had been unexpectedly reduced to a duo, as their melodeon player had to return home, but his place was taken, at short notice, by John Spiers of Bellowhead, an Englishman who sounded as if he had played Louisiana dancehalls all his life.
Over in the seated tent, the Sunday evening headliners were 16 quirky Australians, the Spooky Men's Chorale, who came on dressed in black, sporting impressively silly hats. They looked like a novelty act but triumphed thanks to their unlikely blend of deadpan humour and unaccompanied harmony singing, influenced by the choral tradition of Georgia. They matched an exquisite Georgian set against the very funny Don't Stand Between a Man and His Tool.
• Did you catch this gig – or any other recently? Tell us about it using #GdnGig
