Thursday 27th until Sunday 30th August 2009 @ Secret Location, Northamptonshire
Featuring Performances From: Kate Tempest, Blue Influence

Shambala’s charm is its warmth and friendliness. Quite small – you learn the site layout quickly – Shambala is diverse and arts-based, with a general celebration of silliness.

Music genres provide a little bit of something for everyone, with the emphasis being on innovation, up-and-comers and the creative underground. Shambala wasn’t designed to be a place to glory in the proximity of big-name bands you’ve worshipped for years (although there is something to be said for those festivals too), instead this is the place to discover new favourites and see the new directions music is taking. Our personal musical highlights were the lyrical stylings of Kate Tempest, backed by her jazz/hip-hop band, Sound Of Rum, high-energy Danish/Icelandic rock crew Blue Influence, the secret night-time disco in middle of the woods and the hectic lake-side barn dance.

Other pleasures were in the small places; the tiny People’s Living Room tent had a piano, sofas and a happy, cosy vibe. The Wandering Word tent put on an impressive range of spoken word performers and culminated the weekend with a poetry slam that was so popular that people were standing in the rain to watch through the yurt’s little windows.

The woods had an arts trail winding through it with amazing sculptures of robots, crocodiles, monsters as well as adventure-playground-style nets to climb/lie on in the clearing in the middle. The trail was lit up beautifully at night and open to all, but only opened to adults accompanied by children in the day time so that everyone got a fair amount of time to play.

The kids’ field was, as always, thoughtful and well-equipped with lots of hand built play equipment and craft activities, it was missing a café though. That was our only complaint there. It would have been nice to get a cuppa while the kids played. Shambala is a safe and friendly festival, perfect for families. If I had young teenagers, this is the festival I would bring them to. You could let them loose and know that they wouldn’t get into too much trouble.

Other highlights included the Cabaret Tent (acrobats dancing on silks), the eighties-style impromptu dance-off in the Social Club Tent and the truly amazing range of fancy dress that people came out in on Saturday night. My favourite was the swarm of human flies with huge shiny blue bums and lit-up wings, closely followed by a very impressive home-made dinosaur and Captain BirdsEye, who was complete with his tray of fish fingers.

The weather was a bit shaky but in the end we agreed the rain didn’t spoil it at all – for us, anyway – and we are already talking about costumes for next year! Roll on next August!

www.shambalafestival.org

Anna Freeman
Photos by Ami McCarthy