The World of Music, Arts and Dance is a spectacular universe unto itself. Dancers, musicians, instrumentalists, storytellers, thespians, fire-eaters, jugglers, sitar players, and even bit performers, all find a home – and a large audience – in WOMAD. Anything that is the expression of the spirit and manifested in tunes, body movements or skin art and a legion of other artistic pursuits – whether mainstream or exotic – can be found in this festival of talent showcase.
WOMAD 2013 will take place from July 25 until July 28 in Wiltshire, England.
From West African “Griots” to 100 Other Artists from 40 Countries
The core goal of WOMAD is to give performance artists of all colors and stripes the opportunity to showcase their talent before eager audience where there is none in their home countries. In this day and age of split-second look-up in massive search engines populated with billions and billions of indexed pages and yielding results in millions, who wants to hear oral tradition from West Africa?
But “griots” bring indeed just that, and then some. These people are repositories of their oral traditions, and they cleverly weave their stories with their music for a more well-rounded performance.
The ensemble of talents comes from little-heard places like Mali, Senegal, Niger Republic, Mongolia, Cape Verde and Azerbaijan. This year, while the acts are yet to be confirmed, there will be 100 artists coming from 40 countries who will showcase what they have got.
Not Just the Sights And Sounds But The Taste of the World, Too
With four days to celebrate and dozens of nationalities coming together in one small park (Charlton Park, Malmesbury), it is inevitable that the neighbor’s cooking would waft into another’s tent. To satisfy the curious palates of the festival participants, an international cook off (of musicians and artists themselves) adds spice to the already steaming hot plate of sights and sounds that the participants are going to get for the duration of the festivities. Food-tasting events in the Global Village are likely to inspire the musically inclined to diversify to the culinary arts. The visual artist may want to seal his love affair with the WOMAD by learning skin art and/or getting one.
Children are not left out in the festivities. There are workshops solely intended for them, so they cultivate the love of everything artsy early on: making graffiti and clay models, painting, story-telling and circus-performing are just some of the things they get to learn when they sign up in one of the festival’s many workshops.
Of course, adults get to learn to play unusual musical instruments, stretch in yoga sessions, twist and turn in salsa lessons, and maybe even bar-hop in night owl happenings.
The Global Market
Inevitably, when people gather, they tend to exchange all sorts of intangible and tangible things. The WOMAD is exactly the kind of international event where the exchange of food and wares comes natural. Aptly named “The Global Market,” a portion of the festival grounds is turned into an international bazaar of trinkets and treasures that come from the artists’ home countries.
Origins of the WOMAD
Founded in 1980 by Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, in collaboration with Thomas Brooman, Bob Hooton, Stephen Pritchard, Martin Elbourne and Jonathan Arthur, the WOMAD has since evolved from just a musical ensemble into a full-blown, multi-flagged festival that aspires to express all forms of art without pigeonholing it, as usually happens in mainstream art scene. To borrow a publishing jargon, one can expect that some performances are likely to “fall between two stools” if they were to be showcased before a mainstream audience outside of WOMAD.
Because acts that fall between two stools are hard to market in the real world, WOMAD performers often find themselves devoid of appreciative audience. This is what WOMAD has always tried to address: international exposure for undiscovered local talents.
