WOMAD in New Zealand

WOMAD - A Music Festival for all the family

Music is a universal language. It draws people together and proves as 

well as anything, the stupidity of racism.       co-founder - Peter Gabriel

Womad creates festivals in 27 countries and before Adelaide has its turn, New Plymouth 

in the North Island of New Zealand hosts three days of Music from international and local musicians. Again this year from 16-18 March several stages in beautiful Brooklands Park presented two days and three nights of entertainment and soul to soul communion.

My good friends Logan and Shirley invited me to attend the festival with them, so we drove down the 400 odd kilometres from Auckland and stayed for the full three days.

Across the lake in the parkland, Mount Taranaki dreams of its thousands of years 

of wild thermal activity only resting from his creative labours a mere 260 years ago. 

Things get going on the Friday at dusk at one of the smaller stages with Australian singer    Gurrumul Yunupingu of north east Arnhemland  -  Rolling Stone magazine recently declared him Australia's most important voice. 

Dobet Gnahore from the Ivory Coast presided on stage with an electric presence. We loved her mixture of African rhythms, French melodies and spectacular dance moves.

We walked back to the car each night through the night lighting of historic Pukekura Park

Hollywood lighting and exotic rainforest trees produce an eerie Jurassic Park experience.

   A raptor will surely attack at any moment. As soon as the DNA is ready they will be back.

   Not even the most spectacular stage show can compete with Pukekura Park.

                                                                                                                                                                 Well maybe Bombay Royale - the Melbourne Bollywood Funk band
is spectacular enough with big movie sound and comic movie scripts.

I'd like to say I drew this and the picture below with pastels on velvet  but they're just  poor photos from a cheap camera .........  Alabama 3  vocalist Aurora Dawn glows flamingo pink 

Aurora and her equally unlikely fellow vocalist Larry Love.  Alabama 3  doesn't have three musicians but four and doesn't come from Alabama but from the UK, but its hot country/ gospel/ blues music exudes USA from the 40's pockets on Aurora's mini suit to the big sound. 

Staff Benda Bilili are street musicians from the Congo are who normally confined by polio      to ( no! liberated by) their home made bikes but took to the WOMAD stage in wheelchairs.

                                                                                                                                                               Spanish Flamenco soloist from Diego Guerrero's y El Solar de 

Artistas is wreathed in leaves as passion flames from her soul.

  
Anda Union musicians from China ride their horse head fiddles in a wild gallop 
across the grass plains of  Mongolia. One of the gems of this year's WOMAD

                                                                                                                                                            Pascals is a wild Japanese Orchestra that pumps out gentle insanity on toy 
musical instruments and a metal grinder. Insanity with Nipponese decorum.

                                                                                                                                                                   A Festival is a place to promenade and parade and WOMAD is no exception. 
And that's especially true of the kids who are either walking or dancing all day.