Womadelaide
Botanic Park

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell.

It is the fourth Womadelaide and by now we have very much got the hang of it. The protocols are set, the format is immediately recognisable, the production values continue to be high. There is nothing for it but to join the throng and enjoy Adelaide’s most successful musical picnic.

Womadelaide is quite unique. There can be few other events involving more than sixty thousand participants which run so amiably and smoothly. The old firm of Brookman and Brooman, Koch, Brown and Scobie -now trading as Arts Projects Australia- have made the most of their opportunity. They got Womadelaide started with the benevolent patronage of the Festival then moved it under the promotional umbrella of the Festival Centre Trust. Now the event is moving towards self-sufficiency – with a big helping hand from civic authorities and corporate sponsorship.

One of the most valuable associations is the continuing partnership with the Botanic Gardens management. Undoubtedly Botanic Park, with its grand trees and green sward, is a key to the event’s success. Few music festivals can boast such a pastoral setting, unrivalled in its spaciousness and proximity to the city.

This time, the program reveals both the strengths and limitations of the Womad concept. You don’t need to have read post-colonial theory to have some suspicions about the concept of World Music as a form of cultural imperialism. Just as the Botanic Gardens and the Zoo are monuments to the 19th century version, so the profusion of performance styles gathered together could be said to resemble a kind of postmodern musical menagerie.

I don’t want to get too censorious here. It is just that, presented with such array, we need to be able to put the music into some kind of perspective and not merely treat it all as a succession of curiosities. Interestingly, I think the event itself has given us criteria and benchmarks. At the first Womad it was all one big blast. Youssou N’Dour, Remmy Ongala, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Geoffrey Oreyama, Trio Bulgarka. Three Womads and a train ride later, we realise just how rich that inaugural program was. Now, when we see an African big band – whether Papa Wemba, or Salif Keita, or maybe in the future, Baaba Maal- we have some reference points. And with returns, such as Salif Keita we can compare them against previous appearances.

Womad is a big number. Two hundred musicians, eighty something gigs, five venues and a whole caravanserai of food and drink stalls, flea merchants, soothsayers, cybersellers and other citizens of the New Age. As for the punters, they remain as vast and various as ever. With transferable weekend tickets the organisers confirm that some 65,000 passed through the gates during the weekend. Like its noisy sibling, Big Day Out, it is a logistical exercise of some precision. Security is vigilant but unobtrusive. The police and St Johns, low key. As well they might be. Womadelaide is a very harmonious event. No aggravation, no gross-outs, no tears before bedtime. I don’t know how many people signed the much-mentioned Human Rights charter but, in the microcosm, people seem very prepared to give other people a fair go.

The size of the park and the strategic placement of the stages makes for optimum audience satisfaction. You can lie on the grass, you can stand and stomp in the modest mosh. You can get in close or graze at the edges. Stages One and Two cater to the large numbers, the tents and smaller stages are more boutique offerings. Unfortunately, at times venues Three and Four suffered some serious sound interference. At one point Colin Offord looked very exasperated by the over-long set from Christine Anu and the dance beat from the Afro Celts also made Richard Thompson’s first outing a mite jittery.

Some snapshots from the weekend. A sound check at 5.30 for Radio Tarifa. They are first up on Friday night. A handful of us sit in front of Stage Two (it is smaller scale than Stage One but acoustically far superior). The Tarifas play their mix of Moorish, medieval and flamenco and a vibrancy is created for the evening. Then Guo Yue and Japanese percussionist Joji Hirota perform with the Adelaide Symphony. The ASO is getting about. ENZSO back in February, now making history at Womad. They play Guo’s suite My Peking Alley, a sometimes querulous threnody to the Cultural Revolution.

The Celtic accent is strong this time around. The string band sound of Scottish outfit Shooglenifty combines Iain MacLeod’s breakdown mandolins and Gary Finlayson’s prepared banjo with Angus Grant’s exuberant fiddle. Someone has called this Acid Croft. Certainly the cadences from A Song for Susie and A Whisky Kiss are as fetching as they are catchy. Many mark their dance cards for more of this electric ceilidh. Similarly, on Saturday, the Afro Celt Sound System create a keen following. Brainchild of RealWorld record producer Simon Emmerson, the Afro Celts mix uillean pipes, Irish whistles and Sengalese drums with a battery of synths, samples, overdubs and dance beats. It is an irresistible blend, if somewhat hostage to the vagaries of on-stage gremlins.

On Friday night Midnight Oil play to an enthralled crowd. Oils veterans hear the great works- The Time has Come, Diesel and Dust, Blue Sky High, Forgotten Years. Underwater from the new album, Breathe. Garrett, courting dangerous ironies, wears a t-shirt inscribed with the word “Bogus”. He moves like a frenzied cyborg while the band pumps it out, Rob Hirst brilliant on drums, Bones Hillman ever versatile on guitar. Oils fans are ecstatic. Some of us, however, still remain unconverted to the Church of the Obvious. Also on Friday, Andrea reinets, the haunting call and response of the Tenores di Bitti and, over at the Stage Four, Ukrainian Roman Hrynkiv plays a nice line in zither.

Some Saturday moments. The Terem Quartet play Muscovite Spike Jones and the City Slickers on their steroid balalaikas, Kev Carmody sings about Travelling North and Images of London. At the tent, in a brief spell of drizzling rain, Iarla O Lionaird, druidic singer for the Afro Celts sings some lonely airs from Cuil Aodaha in County Cork while former Pogue, James McNally plays a keyboard from county Korg and a customised Overton whistle. This is a Womad highpoint. At Stage Two the Backsliders from New South Wales play some artful jug and blues and, further over at Three, Sengalese Sydneysider Bu-Baca Diop is creating a small storm. There are disappointments too. Moana and the Moahunters are an interesting combination of rap, soul and haka but falter under too much concept. Salif Keita, luminous last time round, is stodgy and remote. Christine Anu, full of promise in 1995, serves up only denatured pop.

Things crest on Sunday. The weather is perfect. The crowd has turned relaxation into an art form. Lunar Drive fail to mesh Native American chant with techno, the Afro Celts are excellent despite a serious tape glitch, Justin Vali’s Trio radiates sweet good humour. Richard Thompson is more composed and shows the uninitiated what all the fuss is about. He sings the recent, Hide it Away, a witty digest Hamlet, Shoot Out the Lights and Wall of Death. When he sang Al Bowlly’s in Heaven, I went there too. He is a brilliant guitar stylist and Danny Thompson (no relation) is peerless on acoustic bass.

Mara! play a delightful set with enthusiastic audience participation. Fundamental play angry Islam industrial punk with a canny parody of Sufi qawwali chanting for good measure. Resolve the past, they admonish, Too Much War. A few Womad folkies scratch their heads, others relish a chance to hear new sounds and stances.

Singer songwriters flourish at this Womad. Loudon Wainwright is at the height of his fevered powers with songs about Tonya Harding and some shrewdly funny takes on being a Dad and a Grown Man, being guilty and taking acid. He defends the Prince of Wales (POW) and wishes, once more, that he was a lesbian. He is a confessor of uncomfortable truths, his songs, Life Studies of the discreet cruelties of the American bourgeois. Paul Kelly follows with a hard-working band and a set tailored to please a hometown crowd. He sings new songs – Melting and Words and Music. How to Make Gravy sounds good all over again, so does Careless and a duet with co-composer Kev Carmody, their land rights anthem, From Little Things Big Things Grow. Telek plays at Stage Two, a better set than his first. Salif Keita returns to close Sunday night. Again, I find his band accomplished but corporate and the songs, in Swahili and French, dense and inaccessible. The lyrics are about the history of injustice in Mali, of the legendary griots and Salif Keita’s journey to Paris. I want to know more, I want him to interact more. I suspect him of sulking.At this point I wonder whether the Womad format
needs something approximating surtitles.

Such grumbles aside though, Womadelaide is a great event and the program is full of pleasures. But having trained our ears to hear new sounds I hope the planners take us further next time. Less electric pop, and more shading and more strangeness. Portuguese Fado performer Misia is an interesting stylist but she did not create the kind of transcendence which we experienced from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I want to hear more Indian music of the calibre of Subramaniam and more European sounds like Trio Bulgarka. We need more from South America and South East Asia. And what about a first rate reggae band like Burning Spear. If it sounds like I want a lot, it is all Rob Brookman and Thomas Brooman’s fault. They are the ones, after all, who have encouraged us to ask for the world.

The Adelaide Review, April, 1997.