/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/ARTS: WOMADelaide Wows Audiences Once More

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Carolyn Court

ADELAIDE, Australia, Mar 6 2001 (IPS) - It is supposed to be held every two years, but the last two WOMADelaide festivals were so successful that there are now talks of the arts festival being held annually.

Indeed, people in this south Australian city were reluctant to let the latest one close just a few weeks ago, and now say they can’t wait for 2003 for the next one.

WOMAD stands for ‘World of Music, Arts and Dance’. Initiated two decades ago by British musician Peter Gabriel, WOMAD aims to “bring together and to celebrate many forms of music, arts and dance drawn from countries and cultures around the world”.

The first WOMAD festival was held in the United Kingdom in 1982. Ten years later, the first WOMADelaide was held as part of the biennial Adelaide Festival of the Arts. But it quickly gained its own identity, and WOMADelaide has become a much-awaited event here.

The most recent edition certainly did not disappoint the 70,000 visitors who flocked to Botanic Park, where the festival was held from Feb. 16 to 18.

Singer Kalena Briggs of the Australian indigenous band Stiff Gins sums up the excitement of the WOMAD experience for audiences and musicians alike. She told IPS: “It’s just great to see music that I don’t usually have contact with. I saw this Cambodian singer Meng Pichenda and I’ve never heard anything so fantastic, I nearly cried.”

She continued, “And I saw (British reggae artist) Pato Banton last night and I haven’t really got into reggae before but they were so fantastic, so this is an opportunity for me to open my mind to different music … I love it!”

To be sure, with temperatures of nearly 40 degrees Celsius even in the shade, water spray ‘tents’ were among the more popular WOMADelaide attractions, with festival goers making frequent stops there to cool themselves.

But the various goings-on — ranging from mini-concerts, to food- and-crafts market, to workshops — also provided much of the “heat”.

In fact, the event’s slogan this year proved to be prophetic, describing what many of the people there felt: ” Nganana Tujunguringkukla Inmaku Pakanma!” That’s Pitjantjatjara – the language of the indigenous people of northern South Australia – for “We dance because we’re happy!”

Many of the musicians who kept the crowds riveted are legends in their own countries but are not as well-known elsewhere. These include Armenian “national treasure” Djivan Gasparyan who plays the haunting music of the wind instrument known as the ‘duduk’ and Dr Natesan Ramani, a much admired flautist of the South Indian Carnatic tradition.

The audience also had their breath taken away by the performances of such WOMADelaide first-timers as Cambodia’s Pichenda, Malian singer Rokia Traore, Banton and the Reggae Revolution and the Afro Celt Sound System.

But festival “returnees” like Zimbabwean musical legend Oliver Mtukudzi and his band Black Spirits were not to be outdone, and turned in sizzling acts as well.

Many festival goers also noticed that WOMADelaide 2001 featured more Aboriginal performers – representing a wide range of musical styles — than previous editions. Representing country, for instance, were the Benning Brothers, while Northern Australia’s Nabarlek band had the audience rocking and rolling.

There were also the Aboriginal elders belonging to the White Cockatoo Performing Group who performed traditional music and dance, plus the strong contemporary acoustical sound of the female trio Stiff Gins.

‘Stiff Gins’ is actually a formerly derogatory phrase reserved for black women. But the band Stiff Gin has now “reclaimed” the phrase to mean something positive through its music.

Stiff Gins member Nardi Simpson, however, observed that they are still being “categorised”, with many people assuming they play “Aboriginal music just because of our heritage”.

“But we don’t have clapsticks, we’re finding that the powers-that- be say that we’re world music because of our Aboriginal heritage,” she said. “That’s got nothing to do with how we sound.”

“There’s a lot of urban Aboriginal people who listen to mainstream music and what they produce is a mirror of that or their own version of that, so that’s starting up a new kind of diverse, difference that isn’t world music but music played by Aboriginal people,” Simpson said. “We’re so proud of where we are from,” she stressed, “but it doesn’t necessarily dictate our sound.”

Meanwhile, visual artists also helped to create the festival’s colourful atmosphere, including the ‘Walka’ flags flying on tall poles around the event.

English flag artist Angus Watt visited the lands of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara late last year and worked with them to produce a series of flags celebrating their particular ‘Walka’ design approach.

Ephemeral art such as the sand mandalas of the Gyoto monks of Tibet, the sand art of the Pitjantjatjara people and the Rangoli art (everyday ritual designs of sugar paste, grains and fruit) of Indian village women provided small scale and thought-provoking visual art away from the performance stages.

In the WOMAD website, Gabriel is quoted as saying, “The festivals have always been wonderful and unique occasions and have succeeded in producing an international audience to many talented artists.”

“Equally important,” he said, “the festivals have also allowed many different audiences to gain an insight into cultures other than their own through enjoyment of music.”

In truth, if there were such a thing as a quintessential WOMAD sound, the UK-based Afro Celt Sound System, which combines contemporary dance music with traditional African, Indian and Celtic sounds, could probably be it. But even its own members say that not everyone accepts and appreciates their kind of music.

“There are people who have huge difficulties with what we do,” said the Afro Celts’ Ilarla Lionaird. “Some of them even see it as an overwhelming assault on various traditions, like a big tank rolling down on an ant. In some ways they’re right because these people expect everything to stop still.”

She said that she found it odd that the people in Ireland who “have the most difficulty with the kind of music we make have a very static perspective on what tradition is.

“Even if you look at the jigs and reels that are played in Irish music all over the world today, many of those tunes are derived from military dances by the Normans in Ireland around the tenth century … So you see, we all make tradition, we all break tradition and that’s how it happens and that’s what must go on.”

But fellow Afro Celtist Simon Emmerson’s reply to a question on multiculturalism probably captures what WOMAD is all about.

“It’s all about openness, it’s all about looking to the future, multiculturalism at its best provides the best music, the best food, the best culture and the best kind of society,” he said. “It’s being able to embrace your own tradition, but doing it in a way that’s prepared to open onto other forces.”

Aside from Australia, WOMAD festivals have been held in at least 20 different countries including some in Asia and South America. Here in Adelaide, the festival is a collaboration between the Arts Project Australia and the Adelaide Festival Centre.