root salad f18 WOMEX 2016
It was all back to Galicia for the 22nd gathering of world music mover/shakers. Tony Montague reports.
ikers and pilgrims who reached the end of the camino de Santia- go de Compostela in mid- October were in for a few sur- prises. A giant plastic tent like a bloated whale filled one of the medieval squares beside the cathedral, people with name- tags and yellow bags streamed through the streets, and for three nights world music of every colour and stripe spilled out of the old-town bars and small theatres, and the booming belly of the whale. WOMEX was back in Galicia’s ancient capi- tal – after a two-year gap.
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The premier gathering of world music pros continues to grow in numbers and scope. The 22nd edition ran October 19th to 23rd and drew some 2,400 delegates, and featured 717 exhibiting companies and 60 showcase acts. Daytime activities were at the Cidade de Cultura conference centre, a small group of audaciously-designed asym- metrical new buildings on top of a hill, their curving outlines reflecting the countryside around. The locale is striking and inspiring, but still under construction, and waiting for its soul to arrive.
The trade fair took over three levels of the main building – a hive of presenters, record label reps, agents, managers, per- formers, and media people swarming around the stands, constantly networking. On occasion there were short bursts of music – as at the Finnish stand when the women of vocal folk-hop quartet Tuuletar impressed with their harmonies and high spirits. At happy-hours in the late afternoon the buzz of all that meeting-and-greeting swelled into something like a collective roar.
Xabier Díaz with Adufeiras de Salitre
WOMEX 16 saw increasing concern for the repercussions on the world music com- munity of global conflicts and crises. Several talks and panel discussions – most notably Brexit And Beyond – addressed the harden- ing of national borders, and participants shared ideas, experience, and strategies to meet the challenges. An addition to the daytimes this year were radio sessions organised by European Broadcasting Union – live music and interviews and questions to selected acts. Mentoring sessions, for artists especially, made a welcome return on a one- to-one and round-table basis.
Naturally the Galician, Catalan, Basque, and Spanish contingents were large and vocal, their camaraderie and exuberance catching. The opening night concert – The Iberians: Music Tapas Menu – set the tone and the guiding spirit of collaborative exchange. Accordeon ace Kepa Junkera, the last act up, brought onstage Galician trio Talabarte and four percussionists, who added fresh colours from across Iberia’s northern cordillera to his re-imagination of Basque music.
Xabier Díaz and his trio gave a finely- produced presentation of new Galician roots music with eleven women from Adufeiras de Salitre. His strong, clear and nuanced voice soared over fiddle and accordeon, frame drums and pandeiretas, and the women’s voices. At once ancient and modern, the sound and the ‘go Galicia’ atmo - sphere in the theatre made for a thrilling experience of music and community.
Among the many other musical high- lights, three Latin American acts stood out for their virtuosic excellence and the high-
level of communication between the artists. Argentina’s Quinteto Bataraz played new tango instrumentals with flair and poise, avoiding the temptation to over-dramatise. All the fire came from within the music. The triple-threat masters of the four-stringed cuatro in Venezuela’s C4 Trio exhibited flaw- less technique, while keeping a wickedly fast swing and trading improvisational ideas in an eye-blink. And Colombian harpist Edmar Castaneda’s dancing-spider hands and inventive blend of genres and tradi- tions took the instrument to new sonic realms. With his trio’s drummer and trom- bonist in close conversation with him, Cas- taneda delivered an intense and very physi- cal show. He darted and dived for lightning- runs across the strings, striking, pulling, brushing, and pinching them and maintain- ing a relentless rhythmic attack – giving a new and proudly indigenous face to Latin jazz and world music.
n the downside at WOMEX 2016, the sound in the big Twin Stages tent was turbid and muddy, bouncing off the granite blocks of the square and causing a problem for most Womexicans who wanted to listen as well as dance. The needlessly über-loud bass made things worse, knocking the instrumental balance way off kilter for those acts that were not on steroids, like Noura Mint Sey- mali. But it seemed to have no effect on the party mood in the pleasure dome.
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For the fostering of ambience in much more intimate settings, special mention is due to two bars in the historic core of Santi- ago – the constantly packed Casa das Crechas, which hosted album launches and DJ dances, and the nearby Gramola, crammed every night with young session musicians playing Galician tunes.
At Sunday’s final gathering and awards ceremony Glitterbeat Records, for the third year in a row, received the Label Award; Colombian hip-hop school 4Elementos Skuela took the honours for Professional Excellence; and 75 year-old Calypso Rose bagged the Artist Award – after an emo- tional intro from Ivan Duran, producer of her latest recording Far From Home. Beam- ing a permanent smile, the sprightly Rose talked briefly of calypso, her career, and her causes, then rocked the joint Trinidad-style, backed by a carnivalesque eight-piece ver- sion of Kobo Town. She encored with her classic Fire Fire In Me Wire, leaving the whooping Womexicans to continue the dance to Katowice, Poland in a year’s time. F
www.womex.com
Photo: courtesy Womex/ Eric van Nieuwland
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