Late on Friday night at WOMAD, on the more intimate Charlie Gillett Stage in Charlton Park, there was an unusual cross-cultural treat. Ballaké Sissoko is one of Mali’s most accomplished kora players: not as well known as his Bamako next-door neighbour Toumani Diabaté and more firmly rooted in Manding musical tradition, but undoubtedly in the same class. Vincent Ségal is a brilliant French cellist who moves with consummate ease from the classical repertoire to free jazz. They are both technical virtuosi but neither of them plays to the gallery.

It was the invasion of the collapsible chairs at this year’s Co-operative Cambridge Folk Festival. From above it appeared that an army of extremely well-equipped picnickers was staking its claim on the quarter of a mile surrounding the main stage using only fold-up chairs, checked blankets and pints of cider, occasionally lobbing colourful balloon missiles into the air. To call it civilised would be an understatement. It was quite simply extraordinary how far people had gone in pursuit of convenience.

Few bands maintain their early fanbase for 20 years by barely changing their sound, their dress sense, haircuts even, and yet manage to mature like Gouda cheese, gaining depth of flavour and punch over time. But Portishead have.

By the end of the first half an hour, the burly Egyptian journalist next to me was in tears. By the end of the show, the entire Barbican audience was on its feet. It was a memorable evening – even if the august Barbican Hall was nothing like the teeming masses of the Tahrir Square at the height of the protests against Mubarak. One thing was clear though – those who think popular music has lost the power to change things and mutated into mere consumerist spectacle will have to eat their words. Especially if they understand Arabic.

They’ve called the tour "The Hits - Stripped Back". But they weren’t all hits. More importantly, they weren’t merely stripped back either. They’d evolved. The band’s ability to write quality anthemic indie rock is undeniable. But so is the fact that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish them from a slew of other bands with awkward names and characterful voices, like Feeder or Embrace. Or Elbow. And Elbow have stolen the market share. So where does this leave Athlete? It leaves them taking a step back from the pop game, and getting excited about the sonic possibilities of making music together.

Ólafur Arnalds used to drum for a hardcore band called Fighting Shit. But since 2007 he’s produced a string of achingly emotive CDs that integrate sparse piano, keening strings and subtle electronic texture. He’s Icelandic and, inevitably, his instrumental music is usually described as evoking empty landscapes and long stretches of darkness. But judging by last night's concert, his sunny outlook, affability and humour cut dead all thoughts of dark nights of the soul feeding his muse.

Latitude: this four-day event in the attractive environs of Henham Park, near Southwold, is, as its slogan says, “more than just a music festival”. Quite so. But how to review such a groaning cultural smorgasbord? This year, rather than delivering an indigestible wodge of words, I thought I’d take a slightly different approach; thus my account of my four days in Suffolk is divided into thematic sections which correspond only roughly to the festival’s own creative categorisations. So here we go.

His daughter may be Hannah Montana and he may have set country music sales records but, worldwide, Billy Ray Cyrus will never escape his mega-hit “Achy Breaky Heart”. Although that was a novelty record, it epitomised everything people find preposterous about America’s red states. Which is why, outside of America’s heartlands, most people find it difficult to take Cyrus seriously. It's something he finds very frustrating. 

So how did you survive the 1980s? I don’t mean money-wise; I’m sure you had plenty of that. I mean musically and therefore spiritually. It was a diet of Thomas Mapfumo and old Nina Simone albums that got me through the first half, until the Red Cross parcel of Tom Waits’s Rain Dogs arrived in 1985. Who knows how many times that treasured piece of vinyl got lowered onto my 30-quid hi-fi in my desperate attempt to ward off the encroaching thunder of Phil Collins’s drum kit and myriad other musical abominations of the period?