WOMAD 2014: 'The friendliest and most open event anyone could wish to attend'
Review originally published on Virtual Festivals
Since its creation by the prog-rock primate playing Peter Gabriel, it's often wrongly assumed that WOMAD Festival’s rosta follows similar narrowly defined white lines. In fact, it can be the friendliest and most open event anyone could wish to attend. This mix of goodwill, genuine enthusiasm and passion spills from the organisers down to the artists and audience.
WOMAD is unique as it brings the world to the festival goer - artists and bands from 42 different countries played at this year’s sold-out festival, the first time WOMAD has sold out since the event moved from its Reading site in 2007. Musicians are given the power to push beyond cultural and language barriers to really thrill and surprise onlookers. Often first-timers walk around this festival, discovering new, unheard of artists, leading them to say: "Why isn't this artist bigger than Beyoncé?"
One artist who could certainly out-booty Beyoncé would be Eno Williams from Ibibio Sound Machine (9). Williams gives a wonderful performance, embodying a female Fela Kuti with added dancehall attitude. Her guitarist, Alfred "Kari" Bannerman - who played many early WOMADs as part of Peter Gabriel’s band - adds extra rockstar cred and sheer dexterity to the eight-strong band. One other new discovery is Daka Brakha (10), a Ukrainian band distinguished by their tall hats, akin to Horse Guards’ Busbys. Although their dress might be traditional, their sound certainly isn’t. During their Siam Tent set there’s a rapping cellist, touches of techno and a guitarist who could stand in for Jonzi from Sigur Ros.
The BBC Radio 3 Stage moved from the Arboretum into the main arena this year, and continues to champion interesting artists. From the trip-hop folk of the Welsh singing 9Bach (9) through to Amira Kheir (8), a Sudanese-Italian artist whose opening song sounds like 'Thali'. An unfortunate reminder to rumbling stomachs, because the voluntary run Madras Cafe next door don’t start serving their unbeatable thalis until after 12:30pm.
There are headliners of course. New Zealand’s Fat Freddy’s Drop (7) swing by as part of the UK summer festival tour and work the audience with their irresistible dub tracks with sweet soulful vocals. The legendary Richard Thompson (8) at his ripe age continues to prove himself more adept than ever with one acoustic guitar - although it sounds like three. And Sinead O’ Connor’s (7) voice remains as clear as cut glass and she’s still fighting (well, boxing) fit, dedicating her set to the late Bobby Womack who had been booked to headline the festival.
On an equal billing are world music superstars such as Mulatu Astatke (7) whose Ethiopian vibraphone Jazz is continually referenced and sampled as pointed out by his version of "Yègellé Tezeta" which enters into Nas and Damian Marley’s version. The divine Mali diva Fatoumata Diawara teamed up with Havana pianist Roberto Fonseca and the combination of exquisite voice and deft Latino groove is another winner (8). And Songhoy Blues (9) the biggest thrill of Africa Express have a mournful indie quality made all the more poignant when reacting to real conflict in Timbuktu rather than the usual British bedsit blues.
Another main attraction this year is the addition of the Society of Sound Tent which uses a Bowers and Wilkins speaker system of Abbey Road studio fame. David Holmes (7) utilises the quadrophonic surround speakers to play rare Northern Soul records as crackling vinyl ricochets around the four banks on Friday. The next day, Peter Gabriel spends a morning talking about the importance of hi-fidelity but the sound is so smartly directional that from outside the tent it's virtually inaudible. Ashley Beedle (8) brings up the bottom end on Saturday with some disco and finger-pointing house. On Sunday, the real test of the system is when the stage is filled with old electronic equipment as The Radiophonic Workshop (8) bring their backroom boffin skills to the fore. The sound of many a geeky 1970's Beeb show are audibly panned to full effect and given a bit of pep by The Prodigy's former live drummer. Obviously, The Doctor Who theme wig-out finale is what everyone is waiting for.
Some of the best highlights this year were off the sun-beaten track in the Arboretum, sat appropriately under a tree by the solar-powered Ecotricity stage. Sans (8) music is mix of hypnotic Finnish mythological tales given a dramatic bite. Imed Alibi’s (9) percussive Tunisian beats make a sweltered hot audience dance with the kind of swirling arm gesturing movements that you only see at this festival. It’s here, as the smell of honeysuckle wafts from the trees and as Taste of Womad serves up another delightful dish concocted by the band playing on stage, it truly feels like you’re at the core of the festival.
Radio Womad gets Mashed
Continuing my experiments with mobile journalism, this weekend I embedded myself at Womad Festival with the onsite radio team.
I used last year's project with Shambala as a template for my activity. The live blog in particular carried through similar elements, including a mobile friendly blog and distribution techniques - but there were differences, as I'll explain.
Wi-fi Network
Uploading material on a 3G network was a real problem at Shambala, and as I've mentioned before this made mobile journalism at last year's festival very tricky. Thankfully this was not an issue at Womad, which was down to the excellent site wide public WiFi provided by Etherlive. I spoke to the MD Chris Green and he told me in total they shifted 1TB (terabyte) of internet traffic this weekend - which I got really excited about, my wife didn't.
Kit and Tech
Last year I had an Android HTC Tattoo, Flips, dictaphones, SLRs and a Flash mic. 2011, I had an iPhone 4. My dependency on additional bits of tech to give comprehensive multimedia coverage was less needed. It also meant that I approached it differently. Video was shot and uploaded directly to YouTube from my phone and photos were initially shared on Instagram first. I still had my SLR but Instagram tended to be my first port of call. I would like to find a web app that makes it more useable and interactive online - not least an app that allows search and the opportunity to search for tagged photos and install slideshows. Further investigation is needed into the Instagram Realtime API and these interfaces. At Womad Festival, all my photos were run through Flickr with video and slideshows broadcast on YouTube.
Radio Womad
Being involved with the Radio Womad staff meant audio was a priority, features and "Secret Sessions" (essentially backstage acoustic performances), were broadcast on the radio and enhanced for the internet. Unfortunately a big question mark still hangs over whether we have the right to publish this material. I hope we can as the Secret Sessions were fantastic - particularly the session with Bomba Estereo whose improvised instruments included a fire extinguisher and a water bottle.
Radio Womad's backstage gazebo was a perfect platform to let the artists do what they want in their way and I'm delighted there's a digital archive of this ready to be shared with a global audience. I think it would be great for Radio Womad to have a shareable archive of the sessions.
Whilst the video was by no means professional it would offer music fans a glimpse into the unique, unplugged gigs. Also many of the labels and artists liaisons want to see the material so it seems a shame not to share with the wider public. Surely sharing this material would be good for everyone?
Staff
My experience with Shambala was essentially to manage a team who in turn managed our Press Gang (teenagers we trained to capture footage on our behalf). For Radio Womad it was about adding value, enhancing social media and putting a multimedia twist on the audio material. Although the Radio Womad team were largely impressed by what I achieved it was difficult to wrangle multimedia stuff (which they were taking personally) off them, in the end I managed to steal memory cards and copy clips from the station server to create my material.
The benefit of the team at Shambala is that we saw the festival through younger eyes. I'd love to work with Radio Womad again but I wonder whether next time the project might benefit from repositioning itself with the main website, which could also help sidestep any reproduction permission issues.
Moving on
Whilst for the moment the secret sessions may remain secret it seems to me that this is a direction that I'd been thinking about with Village Underground "In The Cab" performances. I know recording and sharing the performance of the artist Marques Toliver secured him several UK gigs because the material was so shareable and exposure extended beyond the 300 people who turned up to see him live. This is an area which I will no-doubt return to when I undertake some more work with Village Underground later this month. As for the festival itself and working with Radio Womad, it was a hugely enjoyable experience and I would love the opportunity to do something next year.
I've collected everything together at the working blog, Facebook, and have hosted all material on the Mashed Festivals Soundcloud Flickr and YouTube Channels.
I would love to know what you think - or if you're interested in working with Mashed Festivals.
Proving Ourselves In A Field – Mashed Festivals At Shambala
Since October last year I’ve been researching and developing my idea of bringing Mobile Journalism to Music Festivals. As festival season kicked off the website started to take shape. With help from Caroline Beavon, a few early experiments in uploading and curating content took place at Glastonbury, Sudoeste in Portugal and Off The Cuff in Birmingham but the main target was a full blown operation at Shambala Festival which took place on August Bank Holiday weekend 2010.
I’ve spent a lot of time developing the site and defining the brand over the summer, it’s still very much in development. In fact, one of the main advantages of working with Shambala was that they were open to new ideas and willing to help us develop, but naturally there was a degree of reciprocation with this relationship.
Shambala suggested Mashed Festivals (MF) offered media training to teenagers and taught them how to produce online content using mobile techniques. I wasn’t too keen to do this in the beginning as I wanted content on the MF site to be professionally captured from a team of journalists with different expertise. The best stuff for the site would be produced by my core team which would set the bench mark for the quality of the user generated content (UGC) - I was concerned the teenage training element would devalue this.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. With the cooperation of Shambala we sent out an invitation to all teen ticket members and cherry picked a small team of six girls and boys who were enthusiastic and talented to boot who became the MF Press Gang. Their final output which comprised 40 stories on the mobile optimised microsite is of such a high standard that I’m now moving away from the idea of curating unfocussed UGC altogether.
I still kept my professional core team who had a breadth of experience but were able to specialise and train in certain areas. I offered advice and assistance in photography, Juliet Spare advised on audio and Jon Kennard’s expertise lie in film and video. Caroline Beavon was in control of the process of collation and uploading.
Jon Kennard details his experience training for video with Hannah Lepper and Kyle Douglas here.
Both Iona Berry and Holly Game were studying photography at college. Iona brought her own camera and was pretty self-sufficient. We provided Holly with a camera and she needed a little more encouragement and guidance. I offered advice on what looked good online and stressed the importance of speed rather than spending days filtering and treating photos.
None of the teenagers had any experience in audio but wanted to learn so Juliet trained two members of the press gang. Josephine Gilbert learnt very quickly delivering perceptive interviews.
Piers Baker experimented with different media and with contributions from his girlfriend Phoebe and other members, delivered some excellent self contained packages.
Some of the best material came when the gang teamed up to combine skills. My favourite examples being the slideshows. Which included contributions from all the group.
My favourite experience was taking the Press Gang backstage for the first time, showing them how to gain access, secure interviews and find the person in charge! This resulted in a wealth of material and a superb interview.
I was very pleased the Press Gang didn’t just stick to one skill. Being competent in a few different fields is important for journalism overall these days and vital for Online Journalism.