Womad feels like an undervalued jewel in the UK’s festival scene, both as an adventurous music fan’s treasure trove and a refreshingly unself-conscious, family-friendly festival. Perhaps it’s overlooked by the hipsters because of its age (it’s 42 this year) or because its institution around the explosion of “world music” in the 1980s now seems anachronistic. The cross-generational enthusiasm of its crowd – glittered-up kids dancing alongside pensioners in the gorgeous Sunday festival parade, and across the weekend’s many gigs – suggests something more radically inclusive, more genuinely celebratory.
Friday night also has a great genre-splicing headliner: Young Fathers. Under pulsing mists and orange lights, their mix of heavy synths, twisted soul, and rap feels darkly devotional, their drums a rallying call (especially on 2014’s dread-filled party-starter Get Up, and recent singles I Saw and a throbbing Geromino, with its instruction to “breathe in like a lion, breathe out like a man”).
Another smart booking is Sunday evening’s Sampa the Great, from Zambia, whose tightly choreographed gang of female singers and dancers, all clad in red, add an edge of stadium-feminist pizzazz to proceedings. Smashing together Zamrock, hip-hop and euphoric pop, the choruses of Let Me Be Great and Final Form sound fantastic just before the sun sets.
It’s striking how many women Womad programmes, too. Saturday afternoon brings the Björk-like glamour of the Tunisian-American Emel, and with her one of the weekend’s most powerful moments: silent news footage of Palestinian children talking about their dead parents playing on screen as her incredible multi-octave voice soars through the space.
Female duos also impress, including Senegalese rappers DefMaa MaaDef, Estonian folk zither players Duo Ruut (in the honeysuckle-powered woodland paradise of the Ecotricity field), and Tanzanian Wagago sister duo Zawose Queens, who smack their drums between their knees along to their high, sustained wails. Female-heavy folk groups also provide gorgeous melancholy, from the gothic charge of Hack-Poets Guild (Nathaniel Mann swinging a pigeon-whistle through the audience to accompany the voices of Marry Waterson and Lisa Knapp) to duo the Breath (signed to Peter Gabriel’s label, Real World). Singer Rioghnach Connolly laughs and banters dirtily before singing angelically, her stage presence like an Irish folk Richard Hawley.
Next to these women, Alison Goldfrapp’s Saturday night rave-up feels oddly thin; better party atmospheres come from raucous bands. These include weirder outfits like the brilliantly programmed Deerhoof (still sounding great after 30 years) and South Korea’s Sangjuru (whose thunderous, sawed traditional instruments mix with spry Talking Heads-style bass-funk). Also sizzling are the UK’s horn-heavy TC and the Groove Family (excellent alternative Saturday night headliners against Gogol Bordello), New Orleans’ the 79rs Gang (especially their great take on Mardi Gras song Iko Iko), and Zambian psychedelic legends Witch (whose politically suppressed music re-emerged on crate-digging compilations in the last decade).
Brazilian Bixiga 70’s fabulous high-energy hour even ends in a celebratory full-tent conga – a perfect metaphor for a wildly entertaining, warmly welcoming weekend.
