WOMAD: A global music festival

1982, Peter Gabriel — who was doing a lot more than just making those catchy Sledgehammer music videos — and a bunch of committed folks crossed their fingers and started WOMAD (World Of Music And Dance) in an effort to expose mainstream audiences to indigenous and folk sounds from around the world. Twenty-six years later, the festival has grown commendably in size (it’s now one of the largest in the UK) and multiplied in location: staggered throughout the year are WOMADs in over 20 countries, including Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Italy.

A train ride from London and a short hike through grassy fields landed my rucksack and I at this year’s flagship festival in rural Charlton Park. At the campground, I staked out a piece of turf to call home for the next three days, away from the Port-a-Potties and rowdier campers. Pegs hammered, rain-resistant flysheets secured and neighbourly relations established, I cracked a beer and ambled off to explore the World of Music and Dance.

 

In the tree-laden Arboretum, therapists touted everything from acupressure and reiki to hot-stone foot massages and ‘gong healing’, chequered tablecloths welcomed weary tent-pitchers at the cheery Tea Garden and kids constructed musical instruments in the Woodland Gamelan. Ahead, the main arena housed a vast, colourful array of craft and food traders, an old-fashioned steam fair, overpriced bars, four massive sound stages and dance and drum workshop tents, all punctuated with signature WOMAD flags snapping in the wind.

 

The moment Zimbabwean vocalist group Siyaya got the party started with their bright costumes and energetic dancing, I knew I was in love. I dashed from the Open Air stage to the Siam tent, from African drum workshops to Flying Things and Funny Hats stalls, pausing periodically for liquid sustenance, organic udon and donuts. I grooved to reggae by old-guard Jamaican Ernest Ranglin and new-guard UK master Finley Quaye. I watched drunken Algerian rebel-rocker Rachid Taha smoking Gitanes and swigging whisky on stage, and shimmied to the Egyptian rhythms of Hamid Baroudi. I marched to the beat of 20 samba drummers, was brought to my knees by Bassekou Kouyate’s traditional Mali blues, alternately wept and jigged to the melodic tales of Norwegian-Scottish Fribo and marvelled at the fan-wielding kung-fu monks. I heard French-Occitane acapella singing,  Kiwi breakbeat, an all-women, all-powerful Japanese drumming troupe and African and Latin sounds up the wahoo.

 

It all ended too soon, but not before I’d become a die-hard fan of a dozen artists whose names I’d never heard before, whom I’d babble excitedly about on a first-name basis to the blank stares of friends back home. That’s the power of live music. That’s the beauty of WOMAD.   

(See www.womad.org for more details.)