It had been quite a number of years since I had been to WOMAD for the whole weekend so last year, a friend and I vowed that we would go for the full length in 2008. And so when it came to buying tickets, I was sweating a little.At $200 a ticket, it was not cheap. But after the WOMAD weekend, I am pleased that I sacrified eating for two weeks to afford to go, regardless of the fact that the temperature was in the high 30s for the whole weekend. But I was all ready and prepared to face the nasal onslaught of B.O., incense and wacky tabacki...
Friday night introduced us to the beginning of an array of different musical cultures. The moment we got in the gate, we upheld our tradition of heading straight for the cider tent. After all, it is not WOMAD without the first pint of cider. K said that she needed the first cider in order to relax and not worry about all the things she had possibly forgotten. I just wanted cider, because I'm a pisshead.
Friday night promised us much musical variation. We chose the Joji Hirota Trio first over at the smaller Zoo stage – a Japanese Taiko percussionist trio which was a welcome beginning to the weekend, although it amazes me how physical the performance was still, regardless of the scorching heat, even in the early hours of the evening. They were full of spirit and life, although I'm not sure how that kind of performance could translate itself into a recorded performance. And it always amazes me how those percussionists can keep a steady beat but our concert band drummers can't. Damn drummers....
Following this, we decided to pick up some dinner at the Global Food area and head off to see Beirut, the first of a number of acts pre-planned to see. Beirut presented a miriad of cultures in the one band, the Lebanese influence clear in certain numbers. We were amazed to see just how many instruments one of the performers in this ensemble was able to play – we saw him play clarinet, saxophone, ukelele, euphonium, trumpet and trombone (amongst other instruments that we couldn't see because of people's big fat heads in front of us.
During this performance, we began our long winded search for Edgy's friends who were supposed to be at the same performance, although we were buggered if we could see them. But then again, when you have the instruction “We're sitting about 250m left of the sound booth, near a large tree”, I'm not surprised that we couldn't find them. What?? Trees?? In Botanic Park?? Never!
We decided to get dessert before John Butler Trio began on stage 2 but this turned out to not be the best idea. By the time we had managed to battle the long lines at the global food area, JBT had started and the crowd was MASSIVE. So we decided that it would be smarter to go find a good posi at Clube de Balanco's performance for the next hour. It was there that K decided that she was going to be the biggest nerd in history by blogging from the event, using the WiFi Internet linkup in the park. I thought I was a nerd for blogging at work, let alone at a music festival. :)
After Clube de Balanco, we decided to move over to Stage 1 so we could find a good spot to sit for Mavis Staples, the US soul singer (who I didn't know until a couple of weeks earlier when she was on the TV documentary Soul Deep on the ABC) . I have to say, by this point, I was suffering majorly from hayfever due to the dry grass and massive cloud of dust at stage 1. I was also exhausted, having worked all day in 38 degrees. The funniest part of this performance was hearing her try and pronounce Adelaide. She finally settled on Lemonade when it became too difficult. The crowd, luckily, was a very jovial, light hearted and relaxed one so didn't take it personally. I was beginning to sleep sitting down so I stood up but still couldn't see anything. I am such a short ass. This was the biggest mistake because we decided to walk home after this performance which took a lot longer than anticipated. Unfortunately I had a Witches of Eastwick rehearsal at 9am the next morning so as you can imagine, I was most enthusiastic showing up to that. Probably explains my less than tight playing...
We began our Saturday Womad experience with a spiritual journey through Indian ragas with Manjiri Kelkar. I found it amazing that her sitar player (or some similar instrument) was able to follow her improvised singing directly after she had sung a note, imitating her almost perfectly without written music. It was beautiful. After her understated, personal performance at the Speakers Corner, we travelled around the Global Art and Craft tents where K and Edgy kindly bought a dress for me that I'm not yet able to fit, but I will someday, dammit.
We then sat down on the grass ages away from stage 2 to listen to the Titi Robin Quartet, of which, I'm ashamed to say, I can't remember much. It clearly was not my favourite act as it has not ingrained much in my brain. I was more insistent on mentioning all the fantastic seed pod hats that I kept seeing and trying to convince Edgy that it would be a good couture investment.
We then headed back to the zoo to watch theJoseph Tawadros Trio, an Egyptian oud player with a percussionist and a funk jazz bass player. Very interesting indeed. I felt quite sorry for poor Joseph (without reference to Andrew Lloyd Webber....), though, as his oud kept going out of tune in the extreme heat so he probably had to cut down his set by a couple of numbers just to tune properly.
By now, it was scorchingly hot, so we were making the most of the cool down tent (a marquee with jet streams of water). We were going to watch Kutcha Edwards, for lack of a better option, but we didn't quite get there. Instead we were distracted by the wackiness of the Zic Zazou brass band musicians in a makeshift carousel. They played the most awesome version of my favourite hymn 'Abide with Me' which was like some kind of theme and variations. Their set consisted of hitting the side of the carousel like percussion, dancing around and singing songs like 'Up the Workers' which used every Aussie product icon they could think of in the lyrics. The funniest bit however was when K went up to one of the performers at the end to congratulate them on a great performance and he said to her 'We much prefer orgies”. Ha ha ha....
May I add, we still had not run into Edgy's friends, nor Nads or Anna or Steve, like we had hoped. We had however run into Nat, Big Al's daughter who came to Nationals with us. And we had run into Flexi.
We planned at this point to meet up with Edgy's friends D & D early so that we could have dinner with them. So we headed over to stage 2, determined to get a good position for John Butler Trio. We did. Right in front of the sound booth where we were easily found. Finally Edgy's friends met up with us. As expected, JBT were fantastic, with an amazing solo from the drummer and a gorgeous instrumental of which the name eludes me. But as usual, I couldn't see a bloody thing unless I stood on my real tip toes. But Edgy's friend D could see even less so I had a one up on her.
We then made the added mistake of going back to the Global Food tent where it was crazily busy with everyone deciding to eat at the same time. But the strawberry pancakes were worth the wait.
Later in the evening came the highlight of my weekend, I think. We headed over to the Moreton Bay stage under the plane trees to watch a solo act by Victor Valdes of the Mariachi band. I never thought that Mexican mariachi bands would work with a harp but it did. It was a gorgeous experience full of exuberance and poignancy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as did the crowd around us. And it was the most friendly experience as well, the people sitting next to us engaging us in conversation (and accidently squirting K in the face...hehehehe) and had cooled down enough to be completely comfortable and relaxing. The amazing part about it was that the majority of his band was missing so it made it all the more enjoyable a performance with the harp playing multiple parts at once. Just beautiful.
Finally, we headed to the Speakers Corner where Nikodemus, the New York DJ, mixed multicultural sounds in a fantastic way. If I wasn't so tired, I would have insisted on staying longer to experience more of it. Paired with the really tasty iced chai and the even tastier guarana chocolate ball, it was a great end to a great day. And I am amazed that K still had the energy to dance heavily after the full day that we had had. But she was as pumped up as the Energizer bunny. I was, on the other hand, stuffed, like a roast rabbit. I was so glad Edgy drove that day. My own private taxi. :)
Sunday, we were luckily a little more energetic, having slept in a little after the night's events. Although we had every intention of getting there for Susanna Baca, it just didn't happen however. Come on, it was Sunday! We got there just before 1pm and completely by chance, ran into Anna and Steve who had got the great posi under some trees for the day. We watched Idan Raichel Project from the comfort of their very large picnic area next to stage 1. We caught up with our friend B and her friend M. It was B's first experience of Womad so I hope this weekend was a positive experience for her, despite the dodgy events that happened later on that night.
Since the Mariachi band were playing in full this time, we opted to go and see them instead of Watussi who also sounded really good. However, I think that the whole band playing made the performance less magical and we were slightly disappointed with the full band, opting to go to Watussi for the rest of their set. Watussi were great, a full energetic combination of rock, funk, afro cuban soul and hip hop. They were similar to many bands that I like and admire so it'll definitely be one band I'll be chasing up further in the future. I might have to spend my $20 voucher on their cd. :) And I might be checking them out if they have a gig when we're in Sydney in 2009.
It was now so hot, it was positively evil. We spent a great deal of time squirting each other with the spray bottle and recovering under the cooling-down tent. It was amusing to see the bog of mud where the water fountain had been (and apparently teenagers had been belly sliding through the mud earlier). We watched Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra from the comfort of the shade at stage 1, while I recovered from what felt like heat stroke. When we thought we had recovered sufficiently, we headed over to the shade by stage 2 to be treated to a jazz funk experience presented by Billy Cobham and his septet (featuring a saxophone member of the Daly Wilson Big Band). Although slightly lacking in the 'world music' factor, it was nevertheless a treat for lovers of modern jazz. It was dinner time and once again, we battled the crowds to get food.
The fact that the Samba Parade (featuring the familiar faces of the Billy Hyde Raider drummers that I know) went through just as we headed over to the All Star Gala didn't help my excruciating headache. I was actually quite disappointed with the All Star Gala – the best part of it was the part I had already seen. The immense skill and energy of the Joji Hirota was the only really impressive part of the gala. It was suggested by Edgy that the All Star Gala should be at the beginning of the event so you get a glimpse of what is to come and what you might like to experience in full at the festival. I totally agree. All that the All Star Gala achieved was to give people a taste of what, in a lot of cases, they had missed.
I was pleased, however, that my Sunday experience dramatically improved with my other highlight of the festival: The Terem Quartet. Consisting of an accordion, two lutes and a contra bass balalaika, the quartet were full of humour, energy and extremely impressive musicianship. They took us on a journey of Russian folk music, interspersed with humorous renditions of Bach's Toccata and Fugue and Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible. The contrabass balalaika was incredible to watch and the quartet performed with tongue-in-cheek verve. They deserved the standing ovation that they received both for their music, their wacky costumes and the accordion player's funny hair.
As we returned from the Terem Quartet, I was amazed to see the massive energised crowd screaming for David D'Or on stage 1, who was entertaining the crowd with a pure Eurovision-esque performance. In hindsight, it would have been interesting to watch him earlier on in the festival but oh well, you can't watch it all. In amongst drunk dancing revellers, we took photos of the incredible work of the French pyros who decorated the Eastern part of the park with fireballs, engraved pipes and what looked to me like burning crosses. :/ When I grow up, I wanna be an arsonist like them.
We sat down at stage 3 to watch Cesaria Evora's band who were a bunch of troopers playing without their leading lady (who was in hospital in Sydney suffering from a mild stroke – I hope she has recovered okay). Despite missing their singer, the band played with great skill and musicianship, replacing the vocal line with a soprano saxophone. I thoroughly enjoyed their performance and will probably investigate a recording of this ensemble also. We then headed back via a much needed coffee fix (which I might add, succumbed to the same opinion of coffee retailers as I mentioned in my last blog post about the presence of 'large and jumbo' cups.) to the 'home base' where Anna and Steve were to get a comfortable position for Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Very Tower of Power-esque, the band were kick arse, only highlighted by the diva's presence. The crowd were very demanding of an encore but they sadly didn't get one as the band refused to reappear.
We trekked all the way to Speakers Corner to get some more iced chai for the final performance of the evening and the one I had been looking forward to: The Tibetan Monks. In 2001, I remember falling asleep to the harmonic singing as it echoed through the park air. It was beautiful.
However, several things changed this year. The first was that the beginning piece that Tenzin Choegyal and his monks performed used this kind of weird alp-horn like instrument that, I'm sorry to say, sounded quite dubious. I made the error of saying to K that one of the monks had clearly had a bad curry and it was called vindaloo for a reason. Well, that set her off pissing herself laughing and then, of course, every time it sounded, we were both in hysterics. Then, in addition, we had this guy behind us who insisted on squirting his spray bottle continually throughout the calming performance. I felt like turning around and shooting a jet stream directly in his face. But it was nevertheless a spiritual moving performance, despite these things. And was I pleased to get the damn wristicket band off my wrist!
And B, I hope you have recovered sufficiently from your nasty bout of asthma after the festival of dust and it hasn't prevented you from wanting to experience the festival next year. It would be a shame for you to miss out for that...
All in all, what makes WOMADelaide so special is that the crowds of people are amazingly relaxed, jovial and everyone is kind to everybody else. This woman who complained rudely about the food at the Indian curry place on Friday night should have been punched in the face by me – she has missed what the festival is all about. It s about cooperation ,acceptance, tolerance and world culture. Not about how a butter chicken recipe from a portable food outlet wasn't to her specifications, the stupid bitch. But she was a rarity.
It was a scorching weekend all three days and noone cared. People were dancing, screaming, jumping around and it still sold out. The park was a ball of dust, dry grass and tobacco enough to set anyone off sneezing. But noone cared.
Everybody is there purely for the music, not to cause trouble or fight or push people around. Noone complains and everyone prepares ahead of time, being sensible with sunscreen and plenty of water. SA Police and St John had hardly any real problems and that is almost unheard of in festivals. There is a remarkable lack of police (probably due to the fact that there was only one donut retailer) but there is an acceptable reason for it. Noone causes any trouble. Everyone is happy and co-operative. And always have been in the history of the festival. It is a wonderful atmosphere filled with culture and experience, a great place for young and old alike. I encourage anyone who has not experienced the festival to do their absolute best to get a ticket for next year's festival.
Even if it's just to get a fantastic pointy seed pod hat I finally got.
Best hat ever!
Friday night introduced us to the beginning of an array of different musical cultures. The moment we got in the gate, we upheld our tradition of heading straight for the cider tent. After all, it is not WOMAD without the first pint of cider. K said that she needed the first cider in order to relax and not worry about all the things she had possibly forgotten. I just wanted cider, because I'm a pisshead.
Friday night promised us much musical variation. We chose the Joji Hirota Trio first over at the smaller Zoo stage – a Japanese Taiko percussionist trio which was a welcome beginning to the weekend, although it amazes me how physical the performance was still, regardless of the scorching heat, even in the early hours of the evening. They were full of spirit and life, although I'm not sure how that kind of performance could translate itself into a recorded performance. And it always amazes me how those percussionists can keep a steady beat but our concert band drummers can't. Damn drummers....
Following this, we decided to pick up some dinner at the Global Food area and head off to see Beirut, the first of a number of acts pre-planned to see. Beirut presented a miriad of cultures in the one band, the Lebanese influence clear in certain numbers. We were amazed to see just how many instruments one of the performers in this ensemble was able to play – we saw him play clarinet, saxophone, ukelele, euphonium, trumpet and trombone (amongst other instruments that we couldn't see because of people's big fat heads in front of us.
During this performance, we began our long winded search for Edgy's friends who were supposed to be at the same performance, although we were buggered if we could see them. But then again, when you have the instruction “We're sitting about 250m left of the sound booth, near a large tree”, I'm not surprised that we couldn't find them. What?? Trees?? In Botanic Park?? Never!
We decided to get dessert before John Butler Trio began on stage 2 but this turned out to not be the best idea. By the time we had managed to battle the long lines at the global food area, JBT had started and the crowd was MASSIVE. So we decided that it would be smarter to go find a good posi at Clube de Balanco's performance for the next hour. It was there that K decided that she was going to be the biggest nerd in history by blogging from the event, using the WiFi Internet linkup in the park. I thought I was a nerd for blogging at work, let alone at a music festival. :)
After Clube de Balanco, we decided to move over to Stage 1 so we could find a good spot to sit for Mavis Staples, the US soul singer (who I didn't know until a couple of weeks earlier when she was on the TV documentary Soul Deep on the ABC) . I have to say, by this point, I was suffering majorly from hayfever due to the dry grass and massive cloud of dust at stage 1. I was also exhausted, having worked all day in 38 degrees. The funniest part of this performance was hearing her try and pronounce Adelaide. She finally settled on Lemonade when it became too difficult. The crowd, luckily, was a very jovial, light hearted and relaxed one so didn't take it personally. I was beginning to sleep sitting down so I stood up but still couldn't see anything. I am such a short ass. This was the biggest mistake because we decided to walk home after this performance which took a lot longer than anticipated. Unfortunately I had a Witches of Eastwick rehearsal at 9am the next morning so as you can imagine, I was most enthusiastic showing up to that. Probably explains my less than tight playing...
We began our Saturday Womad experience with a spiritual journey through Indian ragas with Manjiri Kelkar. I found it amazing that her sitar player (or some similar instrument) was able to follow her improvised singing directly after she had sung a note, imitating her almost perfectly without written music. It was beautiful. After her understated, personal performance at the Speakers Corner, we travelled around the Global Art and Craft tents where K and Edgy kindly bought a dress for me that I'm not yet able to fit, but I will someday, dammit.
We then sat down on the grass ages away from stage 2 to listen to the Titi Robin Quartet, of which, I'm ashamed to say, I can't remember much. It clearly was not my favourite act as it has not ingrained much in my brain. I was more insistent on mentioning all the fantastic seed pod hats that I kept seeing and trying to convince Edgy that it would be a good couture investment.
We then headed back to the zoo to watch theJoseph Tawadros Trio, an Egyptian oud player with a percussionist and a funk jazz bass player. Very interesting indeed. I felt quite sorry for poor Joseph (without reference to Andrew Lloyd Webber....), though, as his oud kept going out of tune in the extreme heat so he probably had to cut down his set by a couple of numbers just to tune properly.
By now, it was scorchingly hot, so we were making the most of the cool down tent (a marquee with jet streams of water). We were going to watch Kutcha Edwards, for lack of a better option, but we didn't quite get there. Instead we were distracted by the wackiness of the Zic Zazou brass band musicians in a makeshift carousel. They played the most awesome version of my favourite hymn 'Abide with Me' which was like some kind of theme and variations. Their set consisted of hitting the side of the carousel like percussion, dancing around and singing songs like 'Up the Workers' which used every Aussie product icon they could think of in the lyrics. The funniest bit however was when K went up to one of the performers at the end to congratulate them on a great performance and he said to her 'We much prefer orgies”. Ha ha ha....
May I add, we still had not run into Edgy's friends, nor Nads or Anna or Steve, like we had hoped. We had however run into Nat, Big Al's daughter who came to Nationals with us. And we had run into Flexi.
We planned at this point to meet up with Edgy's friends D & D early so that we could have dinner with them. So we headed over to stage 2, determined to get a good position for John Butler Trio. We did. Right in front of the sound booth where we were easily found. Finally Edgy's friends met up with us. As expected, JBT were fantastic, with an amazing solo from the drummer and a gorgeous instrumental of which the name eludes me. But as usual, I couldn't see a bloody thing unless I stood on my real tip toes. But Edgy's friend D could see even less so I had a one up on her.
We then made the added mistake of going back to the Global Food tent where it was crazily busy with everyone deciding to eat at the same time. But the strawberry pancakes were worth the wait.
Later in the evening came the highlight of my weekend, I think. We headed over to the Moreton Bay stage under the plane trees to watch a solo act by Victor Valdes of the Mariachi band. I never thought that Mexican mariachi bands would work with a harp but it did. It was a gorgeous experience full of exuberance and poignancy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as did the crowd around us. And it was the most friendly experience as well, the people sitting next to us engaging us in conversation (and accidently squirting K in the face...hehehehe) and had cooled down enough to be completely comfortable and relaxing. The amazing part about it was that the majority of his band was missing so it made it all the more enjoyable a performance with the harp playing multiple parts at once. Just beautiful.
Finally, we headed to the Speakers Corner where Nikodemus, the New York DJ, mixed multicultural sounds in a fantastic way. If I wasn't so tired, I would have insisted on staying longer to experience more of it. Paired with the really tasty iced chai and the even tastier guarana chocolate ball, it was a great end to a great day. And I am amazed that K still had the energy to dance heavily after the full day that we had had. But she was as pumped up as the Energizer bunny. I was, on the other hand, stuffed, like a roast rabbit. I was so glad Edgy drove that day. My own private taxi. :)
Sunday, we were luckily a little more energetic, having slept in a little after the night's events. Although we had every intention of getting there for Susanna Baca, it just didn't happen however. Come on, it was Sunday! We got there just before 1pm and completely by chance, ran into Anna and Steve who had got the great posi under some trees for the day. We watched Idan Raichel Project from the comfort of their very large picnic area next to stage 1. We caught up with our friend B and her friend M. It was B's first experience of Womad so I hope this weekend was a positive experience for her, despite the dodgy events that happened later on that night.
Since the Mariachi band were playing in full this time, we opted to go and see them instead of Watussi who also sounded really good. However, I think that the whole band playing made the performance less magical and we were slightly disappointed with the full band, opting to go to Watussi for the rest of their set. Watussi were great, a full energetic combination of rock, funk, afro cuban soul and hip hop. They were similar to many bands that I like and admire so it'll definitely be one band I'll be chasing up further in the future. I might have to spend my $20 voucher on their cd. :) And I might be checking them out if they have a gig when we're in Sydney in 2009.
It was now so hot, it was positively evil. We spent a great deal of time squirting each other with the spray bottle and recovering under the cooling-down tent. It was amusing to see the bog of mud where the water fountain had been (and apparently teenagers had been belly sliding through the mud earlier). We watched Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra from the comfort of the shade at stage 1, while I recovered from what felt like heat stroke. When we thought we had recovered sufficiently, we headed over to the shade by stage 2 to be treated to a jazz funk experience presented by Billy Cobham and his septet (featuring a saxophone member of the Daly Wilson Big Band). Although slightly lacking in the 'world music' factor, it was nevertheless a treat for lovers of modern jazz. It was dinner time and once again, we battled the crowds to get food.
The fact that the Samba Parade (featuring the familiar faces of the Billy Hyde Raider drummers that I know) went through just as we headed over to the All Star Gala didn't help my excruciating headache. I was actually quite disappointed with the All Star Gala – the best part of it was the part I had already seen. The immense skill and energy of the Joji Hirota was the only really impressive part of the gala. It was suggested by Edgy that the All Star Gala should be at the beginning of the event so you get a glimpse of what is to come and what you might like to experience in full at the festival. I totally agree. All that the All Star Gala achieved was to give people a taste of what, in a lot of cases, they had missed.
I was pleased, however, that my Sunday experience dramatically improved with my other highlight of the festival: The Terem Quartet. Consisting of an accordion, two lutes and a contra bass balalaika, the quartet were full of humour, energy and extremely impressive musicianship. They took us on a journey of Russian folk music, interspersed with humorous renditions of Bach's Toccata and Fugue and Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible. The contrabass balalaika was incredible to watch and the quartet performed with tongue-in-cheek verve. They deserved the standing ovation that they received both for their music, their wacky costumes and the accordion player's funny hair.
As we returned from the Terem Quartet, I was amazed to see the massive energised crowd screaming for David D'Or on stage 1, who was entertaining the crowd with a pure Eurovision-esque performance. In hindsight, it would have been interesting to watch him earlier on in the festival but oh well, you can't watch it all. In amongst drunk dancing revellers, we took photos of the incredible work of the French pyros who decorated the Eastern part of the park with fireballs, engraved pipes and what looked to me like burning crosses. :/ When I grow up, I wanna be an arsonist like them.
We sat down at stage 3 to watch Cesaria Evora's band who were a bunch of troopers playing without their leading lady (who was in hospital in Sydney suffering from a mild stroke – I hope she has recovered okay). Despite missing their singer, the band played with great skill and musicianship, replacing the vocal line with a soprano saxophone. I thoroughly enjoyed their performance and will probably investigate a recording of this ensemble also. We then headed back via a much needed coffee fix (which I might add, succumbed to the same opinion of coffee retailers as I mentioned in my last blog post about the presence of 'large and jumbo' cups.) to the 'home base' where Anna and Steve were to get a comfortable position for Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Very Tower of Power-esque, the band were kick arse, only highlighted by the diva's presence. The crowd were very demanding of an encore but they sadly didn't get one as the band refused to reappear.
We trekked all the way to Speakers Corner to get some more iced chai for the final performance of the evening and the one I had been looking forward to: The Tibetan Monks. In 2001, I remember falling asleep to the harmonic singing as it echoed through the park air. It was beautiful.
However, several things changed this year. The first was that the beginning piece that Tenzin Choegyal and his monks performed used this kind of weird alp-horn like instrument that, I'm sorry to say, sounded quite dubious. I made the error of saying to K that one of the monks had clearly had a bad curry and it was called vindaloo for a reason. Well, that set her off pissing herself laughing and then, of course, every time it sounded, we were both in hysterics. Then, in addition, we had this guy behind us who insisted on squirting his spray bottle continually throughout the calming performance. I felt like turning around and shooting a jet stream directly in his face. But it was nevertheless a spiritual moving performance, despite these things. And was I pleased to get the damn wristicket band off my wrist!
And B, I hope you have recovered sufficiently from your nasty bout of asthma after the festival of dust and it hasn't prevented you from wanting to experience the festival next year. It would be a shame for you to miss out for that...
All in all, what makes WOMADelaide so special is that the crowds of people are amazingly relaxed, jovial and everyone is kind to everybody else. This woman who complained rudely about the food at the Indian curry place on Friday night should have been punched in the face by me – she has missed what the festival is all about. It s about cooperation ,acceptance, tolerance and world culture. Not about how a butter chicken recipe from a portable food outlet wasn't to her specifications, the stupid bitch. But she was a rarity.
It was a scorching weekend all three days and noone cared. People were dancing, screaming, jumping around and it still sold out. The park was a ball of dust, dry grass and tobacco enough to set anyone off sneezing. But noone cared.
Everybody is there purely for the music, not to cause trouble or fight or push people around. Noone complains and everyone prepares ahead of time, being sensible with sunscreen and plenty of water. SA Police and St John had hardly any real problems and that is almost unheard of in festivals. There is a remarkable lack of police (probably due to the fact that there was only one donut retailer) but there is an acceptable reason for it. Noone causes any trouble. Everyone is happy and co-operative. And always have been in the history of the festival. It is a wonderful atmosphere filled with culture and experience, a great place for young and old alike. I encourage anyone who has not experienced the festival to do their absolute best to get a ticket for next year's festival.
Even if it's just to get a fantastic pointy seed pod hat I finally got.
Best hat ever!
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