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but fill up my senses on a healthy portion of music from around the world, lots of which you first read about in fRoots.
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Arriving on site, I hastily pitched up my tent and just about made it on time for the Malawi Mouse Boys; a highlight for many, as it turns out, and the living proof that heartfelt and infectious raw energy, homemade guitars and talent are all you need to dazzle a festival crowd. In the sway I spotted fellow journo Robin Denselow who, while enjoying the band, was amused to read in the programme booklet that they eke out a living selling barbecued mice on sticks back in Malawi. Jokingly he pointed out that Womad had missed a trick by not booking them for a Taste The World session.
No pun intended, but another ‘African surprise’ were the slightly more seasoned Zimbabweans, Mokoomba. They too, are new on the world music festival circuit menu and delivered an accomplished mash-up of pan-African styles, groovy gui- tar licks and impressive bass riffs.
As I was drifting along the festival paths and bars, I got chatting to quite a few of the hip younger crowd that the festival attracts these days; not all Womad babies (those who have now grown up enough to
fter beavering away on the Radio 3 stage for the BBC for many years, how refreshing it was to become a Womad drifter again and do nothing
be no longer hanging out with their folks or at least have made it to the other ends of the field). The reason they pick Womad over Glastonbury? Here they can have a good time and not have to worry about their wallets being nicked. Their musical favourites are the more electric combos such as Family Atlantica, Babylon Circus and Dub Inc. It’s a fait accompli, Womad has become the place to see or be seen.
And what should one be seen in? Why the token fashionable festival item of 2013 of course (last year’s – even for Womad regular Prince Harry – was those silly ani- mal hats, remember?). This year THE thing for Womadians to be flashing was… your instrument. How reassuring in this era of manufactured popageddon to see a cara- van of confident teenagers plonking themselves on the arteries between the arboretum and the main field with their saxes. One couple of brothers (7 and 9) told me they’d made £200 in one hour with their violin duet!
While Friday roasted, minutes before Osibisa came on stage on Saturday the skies broke open and their Afro-rock clas- sic Sunshine Day was lost on a rather small audience, which was a real shame. I would have loved to have seen how they would have gone down with the main crowd on a real ‘Sunshine Day’.
Soon too wet to be able to enjoy those veterans, who I had thought sound- ed on inspiring form, I went to shelter in
Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino with Silvia Perrone
the arboretum by the Radio 3 stage where I discovered two more gems. The Imperial Tiger Orchestra and DJ Tudo both turn roots music traditions from far gone eras into stylish, funky reworkings fit for the new globalised generation.
Meanwhile my tent was being washed away into the Wiltshire mud. Nevertheless the rain did not dampen my spirits and I slurped up the fusion of sounds around me like a comforting minestrone.
Sunday afternoon brightened up with a revelatory set by recent fRoots cover stars Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino and their dancer Silvia Perrone, proving – as if we did- n't already know – that acoustic traditional music that's true to its roots can still be as fiery, uplifting, virtuoso, sexy and powerful as anything with electricity in its make up.
It was the final performance of the Sunday night that proved to be the icing on the cake and the benchmark against which I shall now judge any other per- former: Gilberto Gil. Gil brought a beguil- ing forro set (party music from the North East) fronting a band featuring accordeon and fiddle. Celebrating his exile days in London and clearly reliving the whole fes- tival spirit like it was 1969, Gil delighted with sumptuous arrangements. A true song craftsman at work with his irresistible little screams punctuating the end of each song, delightful footwork and a retro red Fender Stratocaster. Who can possibly resist him?
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