WOMADELAIDE TURNS 30!

(image created by Ian Bell)

Botanic Park, Fri 11 Mar.

WOMADelaide is back to normal: multiple stages, the village, market stalls, the Woshop, the Kidzone, tables and chairs placed out beneath the trees all over the park, the Angus Watt flags. It’s WOMADelaide’s 30th birthday!! There are some changes too – more stages, more tables and chairs – it feels incredibly spacious and very COVID friendly. But sadly, it seems the Holy Cow coffee tent has been retired.

The gates are open earlier this year to allow people to saunter in at their leisure and not have to suffer long socially distant queues. As I sit and watch the crowd slowly filter in I reflect on my personal highlights of this extraordinary event.

I will never forget one of my earlier memories of WOMADelaide: a tall African man with a full-length blue robe playing the kora (an instrument I’d never heard of) on the Moreton Bay stage. I was mesmerised and instantly felt the privilege it was to be there

At my first WOMADelaide a friend recommended I see this Russian quartet, Terem, playing Russian folk music – not something I would normally bother to see. Their musical virtuosity was astounding, their humour infectious, and I had another moment of feeling I had arrived at something very special.

I didn’t get to the original WOMADelaide in 1992. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was at that original event but I caught him some years later on his second visit and was taken to musical heaven by the extraordinary combination of chanting, singing, and percussion. I fell in love with Qawwali music then and there – and the passion has not waned.

I don’t know if I could have even told you where Madagascar was before I saw the Justin Vali Trio. Their joyous rhythmic melodies bounced off the kora and out into the park. It was some of the happiest sounding music I’d ever heard.

From closer to home New Zealand’s Dave Dobbyn came one year and his humble style and exquisite melodies showed his skills as a songwriter went way beyond Slice Of Heaven.

I had never heard Midnight Oil live. The year they were here I was wandering over towards Stage 1 as it was then called and you could almost feel the power in your body as it boomed out across the crowd. This is magnetic, pulse-driven primal rock.

In complete contrast my first awareness of Gurrumul was hearing bewitching birdlike vocal sounds wafting through the trees calling me to wherever it was coming from. He was a backup singer in The Saltwater Band back them. Years later he returned as a headline act and thousands of people sat in silence in front of the main stage and listened to the voice of ancient Australia. One of the most moving experiences you can imagine.

Late one night the legendary Jimmy Cliff and band bopped their reggae tunes out into the night in the rain and no one cared.

One of the selfish joys of WOMADelaide is seeing how foreign performers are seduced by the beauty of the place they’re playing in. A member of a Scottish band one year stopped between songs shook his head and said, “You’ve no idea how amazing this is – we don’t do outside in Scotland!”

The sweet melodies of Algeria’s Saoud Massi, the urgent desert-driven rhythms of Tinariwen, the ancient vocal sounds of The Sardinian Tenors, the foot-tapping bonanza that was America’s Pokey La Farge, the beauty and grace of the Gambia’s Sona Jobarteh, the surprising Celtic harmonies Ireland’s Alan Kelly extracts from his accordion …. I could go on. Some huge names are missing from this list. We will all have our own highlights. Each year offers the anticipation and joy of discovering something new as you hope to find an act or two you can add to your own personal highlights reel of WOMADelaide magic. And it rarely disappoints.

It’s time to start the 30th birthday party. The Kaurna welcome to county is about to begin

(This article also published on The Clothesline.)