WOMAD 2024
31 July 2024
The 2024 WOMAD Festival, at Charlton Park near Malmesbury in Wiltshire, took place over a gloriously sunny weekend. I saw 17 full performances and sampled many more, seeing artists from countries including Brazil, Bulgaria, India, Mongolia, Morocco, Taiwan, Tanzania and Tibet.
It was fascinating to see the Bhutan Balladeers at the Taste the World Stage, demonstrating how to cook a traditional Bhutanese curry (containing a massive bowl of chillies which they told us was half the amount they would normally use!) while singing traditional religious songs written in a language that nobody in Bhutan now speaks. None of the members of the band had ever been out of Bhutan before (and had never previously been on a plane) but they were wonderful ambassadors for this small, remote Himalayan country which has a population of around 800,000.
I was intrigued to see Sangjaru, a trio from South Korea who claimed to stitch together the swing of gypsy jazz with the folk traditions of their Korean homeland. They turned out to be even more eccentric than their description suggested, and great fun - though a little less gipsy jazz than I had hoped.
The Pankisi Ensemble are Cechens from Eastern Georgia - four women singing in achingly beautiful scrunchy harmonies. They were clearly more used to formal recitals than outdoor festivals but the rapturous reception they received from a packed crowd seemed to relax them and they began to smile and even offered an occasional dance move.
I really enjoyed Saigon Soul Revival, from Vietnam, and their very cool take on 60s psychedelia. But my favourite moment of this year's WOMAD was the performance by Duo Ruut - two Estonian women who have invented a completely new way to play the traditional Estonian plucked zither. Rather than sitting with the zither on the lap, the two of them stand facing each other across the instrument (on a high stand) and jointly pluck, bow and strum the single instrument (a bit like a four-handed piano piece) while singing into microphones placed above the zither. They perform their own, beautiful contemporary compositions. And, much like the Estonian zombie-folk duo Puuluup, who I saw at last year's WOMAD Festival (reviewed here in August 2023) Duo Ruut's patter between the songs was genuinely hilarious - and reinforced the idea that the only thing Estonians sing about is the weather! Fortunately WOMAD 2024 had near perfect weather.
You can see a selection of my photos from WOMAD 2024 at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/WOMAD2024
Labels: Concerts, Festivals, Music
posted by Robin Simpson @ 3:50 pm
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