Entertainment

Review: Martin Simpson and Martin Carthy in the Black Box, Belfast

Martin Carthy performed at the Black Box as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival
Martin Carthy performed at the Black Box as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival Martin Carthy performed at the Black Box as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival

THE news from Stockholm this week ought to make all folk singers walk a little taller, now one of their kind has netted the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Martin Carthy in particular. a near contemporary of Dylan's, might ponder the possibility of gilded Swedish palaces.

Instead he had to make do with the altogether more intimate setting of the Black Box in Belfast, along with relatively junior partner Martin Simpson.

Indeed Simpson, opening proceedings, had an early nod to the new laureate with a version of Blind Willie McTell and an unprintably terse message to the complainers.

The junior label is a bit unfair anyway. Having emerged at the tail end of that classic period of British folk in the late '70s, Simpson has done much to keep the flame alive.

A true storyteller, he wove personal reminiscences from his time in America and elsewhere into a set that mixed the original, of which Delta Dreams was a fine, sparky example, with traditional classics like a spellbinding Plains of Waterloo All powered by that distinctive, almost raga, crystal clear acoustic guitar.

Martin Carthy's material is like his voice, strong and as old as memory.

He opened the second half of the evening with Her Servant Man introducing a more percussive style of guitar playing.

The perennial folk themes of class, war and indeed class war permeated the songs, never more so than in the stark The Trees They Do Grow High, which at one one point came to the keen folk ear of Vaughan Williams.

Minimalism suits Carthy. What he lacks in dexterity these days he more than makes up for with an unerring ear for rhythm and a voice that is almost Bowie-esqe at his most London, reaching its apogee in an a capella explanation of the plot to Hamlet.

It was an impressive act of memory if nothing else, capping an evening of contrasting styles united by two great folk artists' ability to make the intimate universal.