Much of the extraordinary success of the Cambridge Folk Festival over the past 39 years is based on its attachment to the most liberal outlook on what can be passed off as folk music but the variety appeals hugely to thousands

of festival-goers, who sit poised each May to fire off their ticket applications before the Sold Out notices go up.

Few will easily forget the energy and excitement of two of this year's triumphs:

Eliza Carthy juggling fiddle and vocals to glorious effect, and Quebec's La Bottine Souriante racing through a muscular, brassy set that owed no less to jazz, rock and salsa than to the dance tunes of the Old World settlers. The Canadians also caused the liveliest  debate of the weekend, sharply dividing onlookers on whether Sandy Silva's percussive dance gyrations presented a new, even more electrifying element

or a slightly tacky distraction.  The route to approval, I felt, involved looking beyond the frequent costume changes and flailing limbs to see what she was doing with her feet.

In their disparate ways, Silva and Carthy helped to illustrate the growing female dominance of these events.

Women have always seemed to have the edge as singers, if only because men were allowed to get away with mediocre-to-rotten voices provided they were brilliant musicians or raconteurs.
But folk is now awash with accomplished female fiddlers, squeezebox players and rounded entertainers. Throughout the festival site women were making the running. The Waifs, sassy Australians fronted by the Simpson sisters

 Vikki and Donna, were instant crowd-pleasers, while Danu capped a rousing traditional Irish romp with

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh's searing delivery of Richard Thompson's Farewell,Farewell. 
Even the instrumental mastery of John McCusker and Phil Cunningham was briefly overshadowed when Kate Rusby, once a TV soap extra, was handed a walk-on part and stunned a tentful of people with a solitary ballad, The Bold Privateer. From the bittersweet tale of two comebacks came Cambridge's other talking point. 

Rosanne Cash celebrated a strong recovery from the temporary loss of her voice after childbirth, while poor

Linda Thompson was forced to withdraw altogether by a recurrence of a different medical condition that previously

silenced her for almost 20 years.

And to which thrusting young upstart did we turn for some male response to this female ascendancy?

Getting so many artists together for the show was an achievement in itself.  Musical director John Tams and producer John Leonard oversaw development of the musical and vocal arrangements during an intensive two days of rehearsal before the performance. Last year's broadcast sessions for The Radio Ballads were recorded over a number of months with most of the musicians and singers contributing without the others present. 

This made the job of turning the material into a cohesive live show even more daunting but everyone involved made a massive effort and on the night it was a lot more than alright!

The show was staged in the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall and the first set was a selection of songs from five of the Radio Ballads: Song of Steel,The Enemy Within,The Horn of the Hunter,Swings and Roundabouts

and Thirty Years of Conflict. 

After the interval The Ballad of the Big Ships, concerning shipbuilding on the Tyne and the Clyde, was performed

in it's entirety and included many of the interviews with ship-builders recorded for the broadcasts expertly interleaved with the songs by Max Leonard. 
Another feature of the show was a ' big screen' projection of shipbuilding pictures collected and collated

by Bryan Ledgard. 
Former shipyard worker Brian Whittingham also appeared on stage to read his own poems.

The Royal Concert Hall audience gave The Radio Ballads show a standing ovation.

It was a true folk spectacular and one I dearly hope will be repeated.