1996<\/p>\n
Womadelaide<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell talks with Womadelaide organisers Rob Brookman and Thomas<\/p>\n
Brooman about the World Music festival’s continuing success.<\/p>\n
Adelaide’s Botanic Park is a green haven right in the centre of town. With<\/p>\n
its majestic Moreton Bay figs and well-watered meadow, it is bounded by the<\/p>\n
zoo on one side and the botanical gardens on the other. Not surprisingly, it<\/p>\n
is a favourite spot for a scattered population of picnickers, joggers,<\/p>\n
strollers, sketchers, spin bowlers and anybody else fancying a bit of<\/p>\n
leisure sur l’herbe. However, next weekend, this quiet domain of nineteenth<\/p>\n
century arcadian empire will be inundated with as many as fifteen thousand<\/p>\n
fans, all ready for Womad’s three days of cultural surprise and musical<\/p>\n
delight.<\/p>\n
Womadelaide began as part of the 1992 Adelaide Festival, but for artistic<\/p>\n
director Rob Brookman it goes back to 1989 when he first visited the small<\/p>\n
Lancashire seaside town of Morecambe Bay. There he first saw the Sufi<\/p>\n
qawwali singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan perform, and there he met his future<\/p>\n
associate, Womad UK organiser, Thomas Brooman. As it turned out, the two had<\/p>\n
more in common than very similar surnames. For some time Brookman had been<\/p>\n
looking around for just this sort of music event.<\/p>\n
“It goes back to my work with the Adelaide Festival over many years,” he<\/p>\n
recalls. “And it came to a head with Lord Harewood’s program in 1988 with<\/p>\n
its mini-festival of Indian music and dance, and Clifford Hocking’s 1990<\/p>\n
festival which included Ali Akbar Khan and Mercedes Sosa. I really wanted to<\/p>\n
pick up strengths already there.”<\/p>\n
When Brookman got the nod to direct the 1992 Adelaide Festival he started to<\/p>\n
look about. But he didn’t want just to add sixteen separate concerts within<\/p>\n
the Festival program-“you’d create internal competition and it simply<\/p>\n
wouldn’t work. I thought of having an outdoor festival but I had arrived at<\/p>\n
what I wanted before I arrived at Womad. Then I came across this stuff about<\/p>\n
Womad in the UK and I thought, ‘Here is exactly what I’ve been thinking<\/p>\n
about and someone else is doing it. Great ! ‘”<\/p>\n
This Womad, Brookman had read about, was an acronym for World of Music, Arts<\/p>\n
and Dance and began in 1980 as an idea shared by Thomas Brooman, Bob Hooton<\/p>\n
and leading edge singer Peter Gabriel, who, as patron and financial angel,<\/p>\n
has supported this project, for international understanding through music,<\/p>\n
since its initial festival at Shepton Mallett in 1982. Vital to the<\/p>\n
operation, Gabriel’s record label Real World, based near Wiltshire in South<\/p>\n
West England, provides an important promotion and sales adjunct to the live<\/p>\n
performances.<\/p>\n
Womad has had some bumpy times with heavy festival losses in the UK and<\/p>\n
Europe and an unsuccessful Lollapalooza-style tour in the US. But since a<\/p>\n
1993 bailout from Gabriel and restructuring which brought closer links<\/p>\n
between Real World and the Womad festival operations, things are on the<\/p>\n
rise. Virgin Records has signed another three year deal with Real World and<\/p>\n
Womad concerts are scheduled this year in Spain and Austria as well as<\/p>\n
Reading, Morecambe and London’s Barbican Centre.<\/p>\n
But it was an earlier Morecambe Bay that provided the idea for Rob Brookman.<\/p>\n
Although, he thought it could be improved on. As he recalls it, “the town<\/p>\n
itself was pretty tawdry, there were no beautiful parks so the best that<\/p>\n
could be done was a big circus tent on a parking lot behind a row of shops.<\/p>\n
It was populated with ferals and vegans in VW vans, some three or four<\/p>\n
thousand people jammed into this very urban event.”<\/p>\n
Thomas Brooman is the first to describe Morecambe as “eccentric” – but the<\/p>\n
Womad concept itself was to get a considerable leg up when the UK organiser<\/p>\n
flew to Adelaide for talks about a fixture in 1992. Looking about for venues<\/p>\n
Brooman could see, as he rather ornately puts it, that “the culture of the<\/p>\n
outdoor festival which had grown up in Europe, combined with the Adelaide<\/p>\n
environment and climate, makes for a complete marriage of cultural<\/p>\n
opportunity and setting.”<\/p>\n
The original plan was to use the Long Gully ovals in the Belair National<\/p>\n
Park as the Womadelaide venue. It was even announced in the brochures. Then<\/p>\n
the Country Fire Service and the police stepped in, concerned that a late<\/p>\n
summer bushfire in the national park would be quite bad enough without<\/p>\n
having ten thousand extra people camped on the Long Gully ovals. It was then<\/p>\n
that Brookman moved to Plan B – and what has now proven a prophetically good<\/p>\n
idea – and approached the Botanic Gardens administrators and the City<\/p>\n
Council for permission to locate at Botanic Park.<\/p>\n
The rest is almost history. Under the aegis of the 1992 Adelaide Festival,<\/p>\n
Brookman presented the first Womadelaide with a program including Nusrat<\/p>\n
Fateh Ali Khan, Remmy Ongala, Youssou N’Dour, Trio Bulgarka, Sheila Chandra,<\/p>\n
Crowded House and scores of others.<\/p>\n
It proved an important turning point for the Festival, in fact it was a coup<\/p>\n
of a very quiet kind, in simultaneously providing an increased multicultural<\/p>\n
program with an openly popular one. It has always been a Womad tactic to mix<\/p>\n
sufi chanting with Siouxie and the Banshees, the Indian classical violin of<\/p>\n
Subramaniam with the reggae soul rhythms of Remmy Ongala or Jah Wobble’s<\/p>\n
Invaders of the Heart. And, as well as budgeting a generous subsidy to this<\/p>\n
fledgling event, Brookman used the considerable resources of the Adelaide<\/p>\n
Festival’s technical and organisational expertise to ensure the best<\/p>\n
possible production values.<\/p>\n
To consolidate as a biennial, not-the Festival-year event, Brookman followed<\/p>\n
in 1993 with an even more successful venture. Numbers were up – from 34,000<\/p>\n
attendances in 1992 to 42,000 the following year. The formula was starting<\/p>\n
to become established, audiences were now familiar with the format and the<\/p>\n
venue. The sound stages were relocated- after causing some grief to sections<\/p>\n
of the zoo population the previous year, the catering ran more smoothly and<\/p>\n
at the same high standard, and the headliners were as engaging as ever.<\/p>\n
Salif Keita visited, Peter Gabriel himself participated. Word on Womad was<\/p>\n
very good.<\/p>\n
This year sponsorship is solid and in the Kennett-style rush to claim major<\/p>\n
events there has been boisterous political support. Premier John Olsen<\/p>\n
launched the program and Arts minister Di Laidlaw gingerly passed around<\/p>\n
amber coloured multicultural solidarity ribbons. But that is all fine by Rob<\/p>\n
Brookman – and his associates in what is now the private production company,<\/p>\n
APA – if it secures what is still a risky venture.<\/p>\n
“It still takes a big leap of faith in saying – ‘Yes. we can do an event<\/p>\n
which includes a whole lot of artists that nobody’s ever heard of, and who<\/p>\n
don’t get airplay on radio stations, and who aren’t heard on television, and<\/p>\n
who are probably only in absolute diehards’ record collections.’ If we had<\/p>\n
gone to AME (Australian Major Events) in 1992 they would have been very hard<\/p>\n
to convince. So when the Premier trumpets the event in the same breath as<\/p>\n
the Adelaide Festival and the minister for the Arts gets up and espouses the<\/p>\n
cause of world music and racial tolerance, I couldn’t hope for anything<\/p>\n
better.”<\/p>\n
But while no-one is likely to clone Womad the way the Big Day Out has<\/p>\n
spawned imitators, the fourth time round is also less formidable than the<\/p>\n
first. As Thomas Brooman notes, international communication has made life<\/p>\n
both more local and more global and the fifteen years of Womad have been<\/p>\n
paralleled by a general increase in cultural diversity. In all forms of<\/p>\n
popular music hybridisation is taking place – like 1997 Womad act, the<\/p>\n
Afro-Celt Sound System, with its blend of Irish, African and rave rhythms.<\/p>\n
“They have sold more than 100.000 albums for Real World,” Brooman reports,<\/p>\n
“which is very big for us. With this changing audience for music and all the<\/p>\n
sampling and technology that is going on, musicians are going to be looking<\/p>\n
around the world more and more. ”<\/p>\n
“Twenty years ago Womad would be unimaginable,” Brookman observes.”Other<\/p>\n
cultures were seen as too alien and the number interested in the exotic was<\/p>\n
limited or reduced to some commercial common denominator like Georgian or<\/p>\n
Caribbean music. Until the seventies, cultures other than western cultures<\/p>\n
were put in a basket of simple flamboyant exoticism, whereas now, people’s<\/p>\n
ears are tuning up in a different way. Fine music has been shaken also –<\/p>\n
with early music, Gregorian chant and recent composers like Gorecki and<\/p>\n
Gavin Bryars. The Kronos Quartet has never played Womad but they surely<\/p>\n
would fit in.”<\/p>\n
But while commercial broadcasters avoid the diversity of world music, ABC<\/p>\n
programs such as The Planet under the stewardship of Lucky Oceans and Robyn<\/p>\n
Johnstone continue to chart the Womad universe, as does Triple J and SBS<\/p>\n
radio and television. Another interesting feature of Womadelaide is its<\/p>\n
audience range. Brookman describes the demographic as “huge” – from the<\/p>\n
tribes of Triple J to Baby Boomers and their families, to the septugenarian<\/p>\n
subscribers of the Adelaide Festival. The high level of passenger comfort<\/p>\n
also contributes to this. Compared to the rigours of Big day Out, for<\/p>\n
instance, Womad in Botanic Park is considerably more gentrified.<\/p>\n
And for the estimated 65,000 attendances this year, there is all that music.<\/p>\n
More than two hundred artists from more than twenty countries. Loudon<\/p>\n
Wainwright and Richard Thompson for the middle-angst; Shooglenifty,<\/p>\n
Afro-Celt Sound System and Fun-da-mental for the house ravers; Midnight Oil<\/p>\n
and Paul Kelly for the Aussie rockers; the Guo Brothers and Joji Hirota for<\/p>\n
the ethereal; Kev Carmody, Telek and Christine Anu for the regional; and<\/p>\n
Salif Keita, Tenores di Bitti, Radio Tarifa and Misia for the distinctively<\/p>\n
vocal. As Brookman notes, “Womadelaide is one of the places where fifteen<\/p>\n
year olds willingly accompany their families and when parents can get to be<\/p>\n
mildly cool.”<\/p>\n
Brookman and Brooman are justly proud of the event. “We’ve got the<\/p>\n
reputation, location, atmosphere and great word of mouth,” says Rob. “It’s a<\/p>\n
real pleasure to bring artists to this venue,” echoes Thomas. “In all the<\/p>\n
sites in all the world – that I get to see – it is very rare that it’s as<\/p>\n
nice an opportunity as Botanic Park.”<\/p>\n
And the future? Retaining Adelaide as the main event, says Brookman, and<\/p>\n
getting it closer to stand-alone commercial status. Meanwhile, there is an<\/p>\n
Auckland Womad to follow in March and Adelaide involvement in events in<\/p>\n
Singapore and in Ubud, in Bali, in 1998. It looks as though this Womad could<\/p>\n
be a world thing after all.<\/p>\n
The Australian, February 1996<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Copyright Murray Bramwell 1996<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1996 Womadelaide Murray Bramwell talks with Womadelaide organisers Rob Brookman and Thomas Brooman about the World Music festival’s continuing success. Adelaide’s Botanic Park is a green haven right in the centre of town. With its majestic Moreton Bay figs and well-watered meadow, it is bounded by the zoo on one side and the botanical gardens on the other. Not surprisingly, it is a favourite spot for a scattered population of picnickers, joggers, strollers, sketchers, spin bowlers and anybody else fancying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-womadelaide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":880,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}