Womadelaide 2005
\<!\[CDATA **Friday** It was raining. And cold.
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Rainy Adelaide. Click any photo to make it larger. This was not a good start to a festival. After checking in to my ugly-but-cheap hotel, I walked down to the site in the drizzle. There were no dramatic changes from last year, just some things were moved around slightly, as well as the appearance of some new site decorations.
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The Adel Salameh Trio, live on ABC Radio. While waiting for the first “official” act to start, I decided to listen to the radio. ABC radio had a booth set up next to the main stage, so I hung out there, and was treated to a lovely and intimate performance by the Adel Salameh Trio, hailing from Palestine and Algeria. The desolate and haunting sounds of his oud (like a guitar of sorts) and his female singer were a perfect sound for the overcast, grey cold day.
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Kronos Quartet’s afternoon performance. I stood in the rain for these people. The first act I saw on a stage, Kronos Quartet, was one I’d been looking forward to seeing live for quite some time. To assert themselves as not your ordinary string quartet, they started off with an old English drinking song that had become the American anthem. In their hands, it became a blistering feedback-and-distortion catastrophe, paying homage to Jimi Hendrix, and anyone who pushes music past its breaking point. Now that they had established themselves as something unusual, the rest of the pieces were somewhat more traditional (although, after a start like that, “more traditional” will cover pretty much anything else). The highlight for me was when they played a suite of music from the film Requiem for a Dream, some very powerful music from a very powerful film. It had been one of my favourite pieces of modern music, and seeing it played live was something I’ll remember for quite some time. All through this, the rain was holding back, mostly. It would run from mist to light drizzle and back again.
After meeting up with some friends for a cuppa, I ventured back out into the rain, looking forward to seeing a few acts I’d been looking forward to, and being surprised by ones I’d never heard of before. Unfortunately, after a bit of a wander, the idea of my hotel room and a good hot bath won out over any kind of musical entertainment. I walked back, peeled off my wet clothes, and sunk into a hot, relaxing bath. Not a very auspicious start to a festival. Saturday
One can buy nearly any kind of fast food at Womadelaide. There are BBQ vendors, vegie vendors, BBQ vegie vendors, pizza vendors, and BBQ vegie pizza vendors. There’s also a chip stand, advertising, among other things, “French Canadian chips”. I took this to mean poutine, the amazingly good combination of chips, cheese curd and gravy, commonly called “heart attack in a paper cup”. I’d tried on Friday to get some, but they were out of supplies. So attempts number two and three were Saturday. Attempt number two, as soon as I walked into the festival site was rebuffed: they weren’t ready yet. Come back in an hour. I found lunch elsewhere, which took a little longer than expected, so I was a bit late for my first act of the day. That was a mistake.
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Dulsori, from far away.
I heard Dulsori before I saw them. Described in the program as simply “an exuberant group”, without offering any clue as to group size, I imagined about 30 people on stage. Surely it would take that many people to make a noise that large? By the time I got to the stage, the noise had stopped, replaced by a woman singing a lengthy song, and a man doing a dance with calligraphy. I felt a bit cheated: I wanted to see drums! But I settled down and started to enjoy the calm. It seemed the story was about things one sees in a river valley, and some of their spirits, both good and evil. At least, that’s what I could glean from the drawings. Watching the singing, I began to realise the intense energy that the singer had. Little did I know she was relatively restful at that time.
The calligraphy and singing was joined by a solitary drum after some time. A few more people appeared on stage, and that’s when things went completely nuts. The thirty-person-strong group was actually comprised of six people, all under 30. What impressed me most was the even gender split: three men and three women. And the women were insane. I was getting tired simply watching these people. For the next half hour, they did. Not. Stop. One song, or movement, I suppose, blended into the next. The audience applauded wildly whenever we felt there we could be heard over the relentless drumming. I can’t remember seeing any other performing artist expel that much physical energy during a single performance.
Along with the stunning energy and drive of the music, the visuals were beautiful. Everyone was wearing lovely silken robes, in blues and whites that were so white they looked silver. They positively glistened in the sun. The drummers didn’t simply hit the drums, they played with them, showing off, bending over backwards and playing the drums over their heads. Each person played at least three drums as they were moving around the stage, from one position to the next. Their arms were blurs, pummelling the drums. Everyone was so well synchronised that I wrote down in my notes: “Noisy Koreans are telepathic”. The stage performance was so well synchronised that it looked like a giant and intricate cuckoo clock.
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Capercaillie. They were much more full of motion than this photo suggests.
After a beer and a bit of a sit-down, I wandered over to see the Nick Parnell Trio. That might have been a mistake, because any percussion group, no matter how good, would seem to suck after seeing Dulsori. So I wandered a bit more and ended up close to the front, looking forward to seeing Capercaillie, from Scotland. They were interesting, incorporating jazz and funk into traditional Celtic melodies. They were good, but I wasn’t into it enough to endanger my hearing, so I wandered to the back and sat under a tree and listened. They’d been playing for over 20 years, and I think it showed a bit – and not in a good way. They seemed a little too used to each other, and stuck into the same grooves they have been for their musical careers. They were good, no doubt about it, but they really could be better.
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Patrick Duff and Alex Lee. Suck.
Then, I saw an act that completely sucked. It’s not often I say this, because Womad has traditionally booked quality acts. I even mentioned this fact to a friend the other day. Womad’s good-to-crap ratio is really quite good. Even if something’s not to my taste, at least I can see value in it (witness Zap Mama, whose lead singer bothers me, but I recognise the quality of their music). Anyway. Patrick Duff and Alex Lee suck. Patrick’s from a band called Strangelove,
and Alex is from Suede. I like Suede, and I was curious to find out what they sounded like. Patrick started off with a standard rock-star speech of how wonderful it is to be in your beautiful country blah blah, and then dedicated a song about America. Maybe it was supposed to be irony? I don’t know. After that, his audience interaction consisted of saying “Thank you. The next song is about being the next song. It’s called The Next Song .” After three Next Songs with their inane lyrics and bad sound, I got up and left.
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Not Drowning, Waving. My new old favourite band.
It was a good thing, too, because if I hadn’t have left that, I would never have seen Not Drowning, Waving, my new favourite band. Hey, I bought the CD. I was walking by the stage, and I recognised a song by George Telek, one of my favourite musicians. I stopped dead in my tracks, and tried to look towards the stage. It looked like Telek on stage. But this was supposed to be Not Drowning, Waving. What’s going on? Reading the description in the guide (more carefully this time), it seems that NDW includes Telek as a bonus! I hurried around the crowd and made my way up towards the front, for the second amazing performance of the day. NDW is apparently a bit of an Australian legend, who have reformed with Telek for Womad. They’re kind of experimental art-rock, in a way. Combine Radiohead with Doves and introduce them to a bunch of musicians from Papua New Guinea, and you would kind of get the idea of what’s going on.
David Bridie, the other leader of the group, was behind the keyboards, there was a lead guitar, a bass guitar, and lots of percussion. Their sound engineer ran up to the stage at one point to join David in a bit of a rap over the song Pyramid Line . Their second-last song was a beautiful ecstatic maniac wall of sound, growing organically from a single drone and beat. That three minutes was one of the highlights of the show. Kronos Quartet managed that too, during the Requiem for a Dream suite, but it took them 15 minutes. NDW’s final song was one I’d heard before, and it was lovely to hear it live. They did a very simple chant a capella, almost like a prayer with a refrain. A lovely, peaceful way to end their show. I will be seeing these people again on Sunday.
Les Yeux Noirs were pretty good, French folk-gypsy in the style of Lo’Jo. They did the always crowd-pleasing trick of two people playing the same fiddle. I was watching from the sidelines, and the crowd up front was really getting into the show, jumping and dancing. I was saving my energy for the next act.
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Ozomatli trumpeting in the crowd.
I showed up early for this one, to try to get a good position towards the front. My punctuality was rewarded, because by the time Ozomatli bounded up on stage, there was no way anyone could get into the area in front of the stage. I’ve always liked Ozomatli, and it was a real treat to see them live, even if they did seem a bit automatic and scripted. They were very demanding of the audience, yelling at us to jump and clap and sing and generally give them back as much energy as they gave us. Fair enough. The really magical part was at the end, when they jumped off the stage and into the crowd, carrying their instruments with them. They paraded about 10 metres into the crowd, and set up a little drum circle. They played a bit, did a quick hokey-pokey (because that’s what it’s all about), then started a conga line that picked up most of the audience, before disappearing backstage.
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Lo’Jo under the fire.
At which point I ran off to find Lo’Jo, another highly anticipated show. There’s a fire installation in the grounds. When I say “a bunch of clay pots on fire”, it doesn’t begin to describe what it was all about. These pots are on spikes in the ground, hanging from trees, mounted in twisted metal sculptures, and, highly dramatically, in a huge chandelier, suspended from a crane 6 metres above the ground. Lo’Jo performed under a tree, lit only by the fire installation. Due to Ozomatli’s late start, I missed the first half of Lo’Jo’s set. They’re a French gypsy band in the finest tradition. They play their gypsy cabaret jazz all around the world, and this is the second time I’ve seen them at a Womad. The first Womad I went to was the first one in Seattle, more than 6 years ago, and my friend Josh came along as well. He fell in love with the woman from Lo’Jo and, with the help of my translation skills, he got an autograph. This time, I got a picture (missing one member, who’d wandered off).
During the workshop with Ustad Rashid Khan, a North Indian khayal singer, the lights suddenly went out. The sign of the true professional is that he didn’t even notice and just kept singing. Eventually the lights came back on again, and some questions were taken from the audience. His singing was excellent, even though I’m not much a fan of Indian classical singing (I’m more into the instruments, to be frank).
After a quick hot chocolate warm-up, I went off to see the late evening performance of the Kronos Quartet with Tony MacMahon, an accordionist from Ireland. KQ played a few numbers by themselves, with four Celtic songs stuck in the middle with Tony. Much to my surprise, I recognised one. I have Spirit Song on CD someplace, and it’s quite good, but the string arrangement played in the evening was tremendous. Tony’s introductions to the songs were poetry, and he weaved the songs together in a continuous theme of displaced people, and lands of spirits. KQ closed off the night with a few more selections, ending with a haunting piece about global unity. I walked back to the hotel, exhausted and sunburnt.
Sunday
My first act on Sunday was Nadya Golski’s 101 Candles Orkestra.
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101 Candles Orkestra.
Nadya had travelled around the world, and lived in a wide variety of different countries. Her music was indeed lovely, and had a gypsy vagabond quality to it. It seemed quite Eastern European. Her double-bass player had a neat trick too: his instrument was fastened around his shoulders, and a few times in the show, he picked it up and played it like an electric guitar. Well, as close to an electric guitar as one can reasonably expect to be able to play a double-bass anyway. Also part of the band was an old man alternating between playing a guitar-like instrument called an oud, and scratching his ear. I must admit that I left this performance a bit early in order to get a good spot for the next one. For some reason, this year’s festival has been plagued with bad timing and delays.
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Lo’Jo on stage.
I’m glad I arrived early, because by the time Lo’Jo made it to the stage, there was a large crowd of people eagerly expecting them. I’d seen them the night before, in a special performance under the fire trees, but I wanted to see them in the daylight, and get a few more of their songs in my head. They did not disappoint: the men were cool, the women were gorgeous (that satin dress! shoot me now!) and the music, oh the music. Their performance was less intimate than Saturday night’s under the fire, but that was to be expected, really. It was 2pm and on the main stage. At least I managed to hear the entire thing this time.
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Ozomatli doing a workshop.
After lunch, which I spent on the periphery of Les Yeux Noirs performance, I went to Ozomatli’s workshop. This was something special. They told stories about how they started off in a Los Angeles community centre, played some traditional music, and talked a lot about their influences. They also did a re-creation of one of their earlier songs, the Cut Chemist Suite, which was appreciated by the somewhat old-school audience. The workshop worked well, even though they were down one member. Apparently, they last saw him in a bar somewhere the night before.
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Not Drowning, Dancing!
Next up was another repeat for me, Not Drowning, Waving. Again, I made up for the previous show by being 15 minutes early and front row centre. Aside from one or two different songs, it was essentially the same performance from the night before, with the surprise addition of one of the drummers from Dulsori on one of the songs.
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The jam, when it worked.
Then came the second disappointment of the show: The All Star Jam . Led by Yair Dalal, who doesn’t seem to know how to arrange music. It wasn’t so much a jam as a sampler of what Womad has to offer. The problem, in my opinion, lay in the organisation of the musicians. In a very linear fashion, all the singers were led out, then they went away, then all the violinists went out, and after a long long time, they all went away, and so on. The only time things actually started working was when Marie Daulne, the lead singer of Zap Mama, came out while Richie Havens was on guitar. She took command of the jam, and encouraged everyone else to help out. Nothing I’ve seen has measured up to the first jam I saw at Womad USA, led by Zakir Hussain. That was magic. Oh, and also ruining things were Patrick Duff & Alex Lee, who came out with a bottle of beer and started singing “clap clap, because we’re all going to die”, and giving the audience the middle finger. Enough of that. Moving on, then.
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Dulsori guy doing some calligraphy.
I had some dinner, changed into a warmer shirt, and got ready for the second performance by Dulsori. I stood right up at the front, which was an excellent place to watch the calligraphy and the pure theatrics of the show, but after my ears started buzzing a little too much, I had to retreat to the area back by the sound booth – and even there, I could still feel the boom of the larger drums in my chest. Dulsori were in full confident rock-star mode this time, fuelled by the crowd’s reaction to their first show, they pushed the crowd for response nearly as much as Ozomatli do. No matter where one was in the audience, the spirit was infectious and made for a very entertaining show in the cool evening.
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Fire, in a pot.
Speaking of cool, it was getting downright cold, and my back was really starting to complain about alternately standing still and jumping around all day. I really needed to sit down and be warm, and I really wanted to see Ozomatli. So I compromised and enjoyed the sheer beauty and usefulness of the Cie Carabosse fire installation. I had a glass of red wine, sat near the fire, and listened to Ozomatli’s third performance from a safe distance. Judging by the shouts and roars of the crowd, it was as visually beautiful as it sounded. They played La Miasma Canción, one of my favourites. As the song echoed through the park, I bought a hot chocolate from the nice bald man in the coffee tent, and sauntered slowly back to my hotel.]]>