WOMAD Festival 2024 review - exuberant global roots sounds, hippies young and old, and blissful weather

The weather is perfect. Rare at a festival in this country. The sun shines. Occasional clouds pass. There’s a light breeze. Flamingods are on the Charlie Gillett stage. They are a London-based unit of primarily Bahraini origin who make psychedelic-electronic rock tinged with exotica and Middle Eastern flavour. Very WOMAD, in other words.

All around are iterations of hippy, from gnarled Sixties originals, lined and lived-in, batik-patchwork panted, to psy-trancey youths, half-clad, sleek in bodypaint and retro pink Lennon shades. We jog and nod. The music is likeable, not ecstatic. The vibe, though, is just perfect. Best way to spend a Friday lunchtime. Maybe I’m becoming an old hippy too. Maybe I always was?

As other festivals cut corners and tweak their principles to survive, WOMAD doesn’t seem to have changed since I visited 11 years ago. Founded in 1980 by a coterie that included Peter Gabriel and theartsdesk’s very own Mark Kidel, it’s a key hub for sharing esoteric music from around the world. Based since 2007 in the grounds of Charlton Park in Wiltshire, it never feels too crowded. Its 40,000 attendees mill about four main stages, as well as a host of smaller ones. Some of the latter are nestled in the otherwise becalmed greenery of the arboretum. Here festival-goers can be found whittling spoons or constructing their own kora (a West African stringed instrument).

But let’s rewind. Upon arrival on Thursday, the weekend’s only (very light) drizzle is briefly present as we set up camp near the entrance to the World of Wellbeing, with its gong baths, laughter yoga and so on. After five flagons of scrumpy (5%), and a crunchy, zingy cauliflower katsu, it’s over to the Soundscape Stage, a giant marquee, for London Afrobeat Collective. Fronted by Congolese-Argentinian singer Juanita Euka, a vision in orange and brown, sunglasses perched atop her headwrap, the eight-piece open with the bounding optimism of “Freedom” from their recent Esengo album. Her vocals are too low in the mix but they ride this out and deliver a bouncing set, saxophonist Klibens Michelet putting in an especially hyperactive performance.

Their Afrobeat stew is persuasive. They gradually build energy, with an audience singalong to “My Way” (not that one), before concluding with an extended and ebullient “Power to the Women”, by which time, everyone is jigging. A solid opener, warming us up. Italian reggae artist Alborosie is doing the same for the main Open Air stage as we walk past. It’s likeable enough but, instead, we sit in the warm evening air drinking mead (14%) and discussing the fashions, achievements and shorts of 1980s Australian Rules Football star Warwick Capper.

FRIDAY by Thomas H Green (as is the above)

Unfortunately, I’m woken at 8.40 AM by hippies in, literally, the tents next door having a Steve Hillage-like jam. This would be fine, since I have silicone ear plugs, but for the fact they have an actual amp. “We could just amble round a D-chord”, says one of them. More glissando meanderings follow. Christ alive. I want to execute them. Maybe I’m not such a hippy after all.

An egg sandwich and Earl Grey tea later and I calm down, spend a few hours drinking cider and blathering in the sun. Then it’s out past the New Regency Orchestra doing their lively Cuban-tinted thing on the main stage to catch the aforementioned Flamingods. Singer Kamal Rasool punctuates the set telling us that he’s just got his British citizenship, after many years, or introducing us to Matt Berry-looking bassist Sam Rowe’s new baby, who is brought onstage.

Impressively swapping between instruments, they’re more about grooves and atmospherics than choruses and songs, with Rasool over-using massive reverb on his vocals. But they’re also just right for this moment, weaving between indie rock and something weirder and more stoned. Snapped Ankles are aptly mentioned by one of my associates. They end on a tune called, I think, “Nisa”, which is dedicated to their late fathers, for whom we all offer up dancing and massed handclapping.

Next up are Zawose Queens (pictured below) on the main stage. The daughter, Pendo, and granddaughter. Leah, of long-ago WOMAD regular, the late Hukwe Zwose, the duo continue his work representing the music of Tanzania’s Wagogo people. Backed by a band elegantly understanding that less is more, the duo, clad in light cream silken dresses, deliver harmonized acappella, polyphonic hand drum solos, thumb piano, and more, including a percussive instrument that looks like a tray of shortbread.

“Enjoy our music! Don’t go anywhere! Just stay there!” orders Pendo, and we do. It’s pared-back, percussive and mesmeric, but made entertaining by their spirited antics, which even include competitively doing the splits. They conclude, appropriately, with a song called “Maisha”, which means “life” in Swahili.

As afternoon melts to evening, over in Siam, another huge, circus-style marquee, I catch one of the shows of the weekend, by Lyon-based collective Kumbia Boruka, whose membership includes musicians from Mexico, Chile and Argentina. Their stage presence is akin to a 2-Tone band, that same energy applied to cumbia. Lead singer Bob Sikou, in baseball cap and MEXICANO tee-shirt, pencil-moustachioed, is a compact, dynamic presence who directs the crowd via hand signs as the band brew up an increasingly ballistic Latin revel behind him.

The set is an audience work-out, crouching, leaping in the air, running from left to right, the band every bit as hyperactive, firing out physical intensity alongside musical zest. By the end, Sikou, the trumpet-player and the trombone player have clambered into the audience to lead us all in the cumbia-marinated equivalent to a heavy metal mosh pit's circle of death. It’s chaotic and thrilling and a suitable finale to a whopping performance.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for main stage headliners, the Scottish post-hip hop outfit Young Fathers. I’ve seen them live before and they were an explosion of contagious energy. Not today. Something is off. They brought some zip to their final couple of songs but, for the rest of the show, despite the best efforts of Kayus Bankole to enliven proceedings, at one point bringing a stage light out into the pit, and the hip-swaying, sensual presence of female singer Amber Joy, they give off a certain bolshiness.

With old school analogue synth kit centre stage, their sound is a machine chug, vocal sparring up-front, backed by showy drumming and guitar. Associates suggested the whole is not as live as it appears. I cannot speak to that, but the way they maintain a sullen, backwards-facing silence between songs, despite a large audience willing them to interact, is not conducive. This especially seems to derive from co-frontman G Hastings who emanates sneer and the impression he doesn’t want to be there at all. They aren’t terrible – they're adequate, but with a side order of purposefully giving little to an up-for-it crowd – hence disappointing.

Happily the venerable DJ Paulette is on at Soundscape bangin’ out house music all night long (well, 2.00 AM, to be truthful), so a combination of that and further analysis of Warwick Capper's long ago career rounds out the night.

SATURDAY by Guy Oddy

The WOMAD Festival is pretty much the last word in diverse programming, when it comes to large scale music events in the UK. However, it could be argued that this year, the festival even manages to out-do itself on that front. For not only is there fine hip-swinging fare from Africa, South America, South Asia, Europe and even further afield, there is also a special helping of raw and fiery gypsy punk rock from Gogol Bordello, who are headlining the Open Air Stage on Saturday evening. Not only that, but it seems to be the most explicitly political WOMAD in some time. There are Palestinian flags everywhere and plenty of vocal support for the people of Gaza from all the stages throughout the weekend. However, it is down to Eugene Hütz and his multi-cultural comrades in Gogol Bordello to fly the flag for the people of Ukraine – and this they do with serious gusto. Not only is the stage bedecked in a raised fist, painted in yellow and blue, but their set is punctuated with cries to give the people of Kyiv and Kharkiv hope, strength and life, but also howls of “Fight the oppressor! Fight the oppressor!”.

Saturday isn’t all about political posturing though and the Open Air Stage opens for business with the London Bulgarian Choir, singing bawdy folk songs from the crossroads of Asia and Eastern Europe. These have titles that translate as “Batchelor Grandfather” and “Granny Had a Dream That She Married a Young Man and Then She Woke Up” and put a smile on everyone’s face.

Later, when the sun is hot enough to fry bacon, we retreat to the wooded Ecotricity Stage for a set of woozy desert blues from Justin Adams’ latest collaboration with Moroccan gnawa master Mohamed Errebbaa (pictured left). Clapped percussion weaves around circular guitar riffs and a camel’s gait groove to produce mystic trance music and is blissful in the extreme. From there, we venture back into the main site for some sultry Brazilian grooves from Bala Desejo. Bringing some serious sexiness to the afternoon, the seven-piece combine samba, tropicália, bossa nova, funk and soul to ease the audience into the evening. It’s beautiful and mellow yet gets plenty dancing, with dreamy trumpet accents that in no way sounds anything less than of the moment.

As the sun begins its descent towards the horizon, we catch the magnificent two-piece O. with their muscular John Zorn-ish punk-jazz. Their brutal grooves are more than enough to blow the cobwebs away and almost manage to raise a mosh pit. Unfortunately, we have to leave early to grab another beer and to get a decent spot for Gogol Bordello’s headline set, but I shall certainly be keeping an eye open for another dose of Tash Keary and Joseph Henwood’s incredible noise in the near future.

Gogol Bordello hit the Open Air Stage running and with engines revving they transform the space into riotous and disorderly chaos from the first notes of “Sacred Darling”. Unfortunately, the volume doesn’t do them justice at first, but this is soon sorted out and by the time Eugene Hütz and his gang are belting out “Fire on Ice Flow” and “Immigrandiada”, the audience is having a blast and dancing like maniacs all the way back to the food stalls facing the stage. “It’s going to be a great fucking night,” howls Hütz and he’s not wrong. Older hippy grandparents dance enthusiastically with younger tattooed and dreadlocked kids and all kinds in between. Meanwhile Hütz stands on a stage monitor and thrusts a bottle of red wine into the air, managing to spray it over most of the band and a fair few in the audience at the front of the stage, as he directs the mayhem going on around him. It’s an exhilarating show that both kicks down the doors and brings people together at the same time.

No-one is ready to call it a day when Gogol Bordello finally leave the stage though. There’s far too much adrenaline, beer and the like pumping around our systems. So, we head off to a packed Soundscape Stage and spend the early hours skanking to OBF and UK Grime MC JMan’s classic 70s reggae and dub set. The smiles are broad, there are plenty of exotic smells in the air and by the time their show comes to an end, we are well and truly spent but ready for more of the same tomorrow.

SUNDAY by Peter Culshaw

Of the non-musical offerings at WOMAD, from gong baths to kora workshops, I decide to investigate the Byline Times curated World of Words. The previous day I caught an interview with the Zelig-like Rikki Stein, who must be older than he looks, with epic tales of touring with the Kinks and Hendrix in France, living with the Joujoukas in Morocco, time in a hippie commune and hanging with the Grateful Dead, as well as managing the visionary Fela Kuti for a couple of decades. His memoir, Moving Music, is definitely worth a read.

Sunday morning has a podcast from Backlisted, which purveys all sorts of fascinating info, like the fact that Melville’s Moby Dick was a career ending flop when it was first published. Turns out, the critics who all slammed it are not infallible after all. Next was a talk about the politics of Climate Change. Ecotricity guru Dale Vince was forthright in the necessity of veganism. Other crunchy topics - should the Greens spend so much energy on divisive issues like trans rights when a climate emergency is about to devour us all? And should the ice cream vans at Ecotricity sponsored WOMAD be electric and not spewing out exhaust into the audience?

The great thing about WOMAD is the mixture of the unknown and the familiar. The least known are often at the Ecotricity stage in the leafy Arboretum area. Who knew that bossa nova was big in Mongolia? Enji, now living in Bavaria but has kept her Mongolian roots, as well as her Brazilian jazz influences. The Bhutan Balladeers make a gorgeous, atmospheric folky sound, though which of us are versed enough in Bhatan music to make a definitive judgement on how they rate? Also, at Ecotricity, Istanbul’s Islandman provide very enjoyable Turkish psychedelically infused grooves. You could have been at some club like Middle Earth or UFO in about 1967 listening to Soft Machine or early Pink Floyd, time and space warping to their music.

tlk are from another specific place – Bristol, home to down tempo electronica for decades – they feel like grandchildren of Portishead or Massive Attack, with a rather pure, mesmerising vocal sound. Leyla McCalla, late night at the Siam Stage has various sources for her music – among them classical cello, Haitian and New Orleans music. Her released tunes are charming and new sounding, it feels like developing her live style is a work in progress and it will be fascinating to see her develop. And the second half of her set sounds fabulous wafting into my tent.

But the big star was Baaba Maal (pictured left), showman, shaman and funky spiritual marabout. Sometimes with such festivals, the headliner used to be a big name say 20 or 30 years ago and there is a sense of going through the motions, but Baaba Maal is, with a youngish, super energetic band, totally on it from the off. At 71, he has kept himself in enviable shape. The percussion is unbelievable, both Mbaya Ndiaga and the extraordinary talking drummer Abdou Aziz Anne are notable virtuosos of rhythm. From Dakar, the albino bassist Dakh Kudia Keita must be the funkiest female bass player since Tina Weymouth of the Talking Heads. She also, incidentally co-founded Care Albinos, spreading awareness and uplifting people with albinism.

“Kalaayo” starts with Baaba Maal sounding like a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, before some impossible grooviness. The classics roll out like “Sidiki”, a song to his old bassist, from his Firin’ In Fouta album of 2001 (which I last saw him perform to an adoring crowd in Podor, his home town in north Senegal). “Yerimaya Celebration”, from his album Being, is a joyous song about fisherman with some heavy percussion sounding like horses galloping down a dirt track. Another epic classic “Gorel” rounds things up with an African disco monster groove that had there been a roof would have raised it. Delirious waves of energy run through the audience on a perfect summer’s night. The way the percussion playfully weaves on and out of a killer bass line and Baaba Maal’s glorious vocals rise above the music is a delightful finale to a classic WOMAD, blessed with sunshine and shedloads of great global music.

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