WOMAD Charlton Park 2011

[David Flower]

for those who enjoyed Orchestre Nationale de Barbès 2 years ago, one of their former singers (who also sung with Joe Zawinul's Syndicate) is on Sunday

AZIZ SAHMAOUi & UNIVERSITY OF GNAWA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQyAL1Wh-3Y

[Dominic]

I'm here at Womad with World Music Network. Our stall is between the Big Red Tent stage and San Fran's Disco bar* if anyone wants to come & say hello.

*I think that Alex Stewart is doing a Flying Carpet DJ set there tonight (Thursday) for early birds...

[Des]

I expect I'll pop in on Saturday Dominic.

I'm soooo torn between Aurelio and Fatoumata Diawara both on at the same time....

[NormanD]

....if you want to win a copy of Aurelio's CD, Des, got to http://noreason.podomatic.com/

(I learned such shamelessness from a Mr Renton).

[Alan]

if anyone wants to come & say hello

will do Dominic, looking forward to it!

[Jamie Renton]

(I learned such shamelessness from a Mr Renton).

And I'm happy to offer more advice on shameless self-promotion at Darbucka next Friday
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18699

[Des]

I've entered the competition. I won't win.

[Dominic]

I expect I'll pop in on Saturday Dominic.

I'm soooo torn between Aurelio and Fatoumata Diawara both on at the same time....

Did you visit, Des? It might of been during my 5-minute break. I wandered off to buy a CD by Ayarkhaan from Sakha/Yakutia, an all female focal and khomus outfit - they're on the Radio 3 stage at 6.15 this evening.

Good to see Chris and Alan, and especially good to see Buffy here with Hamid Zagzoule.

[Des]

Couldn't find you, Dominic - I'd forgotten where you said you were!

I had a good day though. Because time was limited (and the return bus left the site at 10pm) it was all a bit hectic trying to fit as many acts in as possible. I saw the following:

Hassan Erraji's MoRoccan Rollers - a good start to the day with high energy North African grooves and some entertaining Oud-playing. Hassan must be the Jimi Hendrix of his instrument, playing it in all sorts of positions and with a real percussive attack.

Khaira Arby Never seen her before, but this Malian singer was pretty impressive and really held the open air stage, Some fine guitar-playing in her band.

Shunsuke Kimura & Etsuro Ono Some great Shamisen-playing and a nice ambience.

Faiz Ali Faiz My annual Qawwli fix was provided by a great singer and his equally impressive vocalists and percussionists. A glorious highlight of the day.

Samuel Yirga Pristine Ethiopian chamber jazz from the young pianist and his group. Lovely sax solos too. I would have loved it just as much if I hadn't had that nice pint of Bounders cider.

Vieux Farka Toure This was OK but frankly there was not enough light and shade in his guitar-playing and the set relied too much on some musical cliches. File under rock with a pinch of desert blues.

Aurelio Far and away the best act of my day, and one of the great performances I've seen recently. Beautifully-controlled changes in tempo and irresistible sultry vibes. Aurelio's guitarist, an ussaming Peter Kay lookalike, turned out to be a genius, playing at least one gorgeous and miraculous solo. Unforgettable.

Las Balkanieras Oh dear oh dear. A dreadful sub-Eurovision mess, They should watch more of the song contest and perhaps they'll improve.

Axel Krygier Extraordinary and surreal. What I saw and heard defies description. If insane dancy electronica, pantomime humour and extrovert showmanship are your bag, he's your man. If you don't like any of those things, he's still great.


Not much time to do any wildlife although the expected Episyrphus balteatus hoverflies were everywhere plus a probable Metasyrphus luniger landed on my arm during Vieux's set. The most impressive sight was a roost flight of Jackdaws over the campsite at dusk as I made my way to the bus - many hundreds of birds involved with smaller numbers of Rooks - they were like soot flakes against the darkening sky. Also a small bat near the car-park assumed to be a Pipistrelle species.

[Ian M]

I wandered off to buy a CD by Ayarkhaan from Sakha/Yakutia, an all female focal and khomus outfit - they're on the Radio 3 stage at 6.15 this evening.

Dont miss - they are unforgettable.

[Dominic]

Did you see them at the Proms, Ian?
http://ayarkhaan.com/

[Ian M]

Indeed, I did. They will also be in the broadcast of the Human Planet prom on Friday BBC4, although how much I don't know. But I have never heard mouth harps sound like unearthly early electronics before or heard horses and nature evoked so splendidly.

[Dominic]

I didn't miss and, yes, they were unforgettable. Lovely setting too, in the arboretum at Charlton Park.

I was right to buy the CD early - I hear that many missed out after the performance.

[Con Murphy]

Friday and Sunday thoughts. Just be grateful I couldn't make it on Saturday.

The centre of gravity appears to have shifted in the three years since my last WOMAD experience, away from the main stages to the Big Red Tent at the opposite end of the excellently-appointed Charlton Park arena. I know in the past that strange dance-related events happened there long after we grey-hairs were tucked up in bed (sometime after 9:30pm), but just an hour into Friday and the young Womadeers were already out in force, packing the space for a serendipitous wig-out to blazing Congolese stand-in Baloji. The Belgium-based singer’s appearance threatened to peak the festival barely before it had started, and was a microcosmic example of the visa-related shenanigans that have affected WOMAD line-ups over the years, as the EU-based African answered the call made necessary by Sierra Leone’s Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew’s lack of timely paperwork.

This year, thanks in large part to a partnership with the French Music Office, a more Eurocentric approach was plainly in evidence, with quirky experimentalist Chapelier Fou one of a number of left-field continental artists that blessed the nearby Charlie Gillett stage over the weekend. The Frenchman mixed samples and loops around shards of classical violin, an instrument heard in a more warmly traditional setting on the same stage two days earlier as young fiddler Rua MacMillan lived up his 2009 award as Scotland young musician of the year. Another Scottish fiddler, Aberdeenshire’s Sarah Beattie, wove threads of Gaelic beauty through trio Pacific Curls’ Maori tunes and tales rich in atmosphere and verve (disclaimer: sometimes musical impressions can be accentuated by positive culinary – and musical - experiences in the flavoursome Taste the World tent).

Early evening saw the Siam Tent come into its own, as it inevitably does when the hottest part of the day is behind us, with the Ethio-dub mashup of Dub Colossus seeping dark and dirty east African jazz-tinged grunge out of which emerged a crowd-popping version of Up Town Top Ranking.

Back in that Red Tent, a vibrant Friday afternoon (a capella girl quintent The Boxettes a picture of charm and preternaturally flexible diaphragms) turned into an exuberant old school punky reggae party courtesy of the mighty national treasure the Dub Pistols (they may have been on something, who can say?) while on the Open Air Stage the various Cuban and Malian greats that make up Afrocubism fought a poor sound mix and almost insurmountable expectations to deliver a set that made up in charm and individual musicianship for what it lacked in spark and interplay. Charm aplenty from Abigail Washburn too, the claw-hammer gal from America lighting up the Radio 3 (aka The Real Charlie Gillett) Stage with her wry observations coloured by expert but unshowy banjo and mountain-dew voice, her between-song patter remaining just the sweet side of cutesy. The contrast between this cool and folksy (in a good way) sound and the rawer, more WOMtrad sound of the extraordinary Sufi soul vocal aerobics of Faiz Ali Faiz later that night could not be more extreme or indeed more apposite to this land of sensual contrasts.

Plenty of contrast too in the heavy north African (by way of Paris, natch) groove of Aziz Sahmaoui and the University of Gnawa. I’d have liked to have seen just a bit more of the guimbri bass that lends gnawa such a heady and individual style, but the crowd wasn’t complaining at this intricate blend of oud, kora and guitar so neither will I (especially as their workshop was so bright and watchable). This was Sunday afternoon, and my new favourite stage the BRT was showing worrying signs of a...crouch...towards the worst of all festy blights, the cordon sani-chair that springs up around the edge of a tent as the forty-plus (I know I am – shoot me if I ever get like this) begin to suffer from Festival-Leg. This is a bit like trenchfoot only not nearly as painful, potentially fatal or indeed worthy of such defiantly stiff-upper-lipped, head in a book/The Independent intransigence in the face of anybody actually trying to get in to witness the performance. The masterful Penguin Café were the carriers, transporting the disease from their Cambridge Folk festival appearance the previous day, and so in the absence of any possibility of ingress, attention (and tippy-toed apologies) were turned to the Open Air stage Italian all-black-clad folk-rockers Nidi D’Arac, one of the undoubted hits of Friday/Sunday, full of rhythmically propulsive Mediterranean guitar-driven gusto and bursts of shit-kicking intermingling violin.

A veritable hit on a top-notch day, but possibly matched by Amparo Sanchez’s admix of Espana, Americana, Mexicana and that keening, gravelly vocal. The pocket dynamo’s throaty vocalising is as nothing to the extraordinary Ayarkhaan, a trio from the Russian republic of Sakha whose guttural cadences (think the Trio Bulgarka transported to Mongolia) create a mesmerising pocket of space around their static, sumptuously attired figures. They stop time with those voices, but also bend it and the air around them with a remarkable aural toolset that comprises no more than the jaw’s harp (which they call khomus, which appears to be a phonetic Asian term for all manner of instruments). A veritable BBC sound department array of ambient textures and impressions are issued forth. You name it - birds, galloping horses, grasses blowing in the breeze - boy can these ladies deliver.

On the same day, old-time Ghanaian guitarist Ebo Taylor served as an interesting comparison with Brooklyn-based rapper and fellow Ghanaian Blitz the Ambassador. Both are ‘old-skool’ in their way, but whereas the former taps into the new-found zeal for Afrobeat and Highlife guitar figures to deliver a jaunty take on early 70s west African swamp-pop, the rapper references the early days of ‘consciousness’ hip-hop and jigs it all up with some loose Troublefunk go-go style brass which thankfully buries his rather average delivery in a rolling bubbling groove. Two sides of the same coin, both perfectly at home on a broiling Womad afternoon.

What else? Nathale Natiembe, chanced upon in a sparsely-attended dance workshop. Nevertheless her stark, emotive maloya suddenly made sense placed in its dark, contemporary setting; and finally, this year’s guitar discovery Bombino from Niger, a cool, intimate purveyor of singer-songwriterdom that speaks to every soul and is a perfect comedown after a weekend of sensory highs.

DISH OF THE FESTIVAL: Goan Fish Curry for the nth year running.

[Des]

That was just like being there Con, but without the toilets. Tremendous.