A Womad Feeling
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Review by Dawn Nugent
Describing Womad in words seems an antiquated and daunting task! Womad is ALL about feeling!
Review by Dawn Nugent
Describing Womad in words seems an antiquated and daunting task! Womad is ALL about feeling!
The feeling is an ecstatic high, available to all without mind altering drugs. If you were there you will understand putting into words a reflection on such a heavenly experience seems slightly ridiculous. I guess similar to those who experience a blissful peace with a near death experience and then return to the real world and try to describe it!
On returning home this year I feel physically like I’ve run a marathon, elated and knackered! After walking up and down and around the beautiful Bowl of Brooklands site and the big monster climb back up to the camp ground a few times a day, coupled with about 30 hours of dancing, it seems more exercise than you might do in a week is often a healthy spin off of a weekend festival!
This year the musical talent was immense. From the truly etheric purity of Tanya Tagaq’s throat singing performance to the high energy, grab you by the hand and lead you into the dance pied pipers of global sound, Afro Celt Sound Sytem! N’Faly Kouyate, who gave an awe-inspiring solo performance showcasing his beautiful kora playing and celestial singing voice, likes to describe the Afro Celts as a rich juicy salad! A good analogy as all the ingredients are vibrant, tasty and you just know it’s soo good for you!
I felt very privileged this year to spend an hour each with three legendary forefathers of the UK music scene, Horace Andy, Nitin Sawhney and Don Letts. Hosted by Nick Bollinger, Artists in Conversation was an intimate and informal way of hearing their stories and gave a real insight into their personalities.
Horace Andy, nickname Sleepy, described the difficulties of getting radio play in the early days of reggae prior to Bob Marley paving the way and the struggles of being ripped off by Jamaican record producers at that time. A chance meeting at a London bus stop with one of the Massive Attack band members evolved into a long lasting collaboration and put Horace Andy firmly into the hearts of many. Growing up in a power struggle between two political forces in Jamaica, Horace Andy is an envoy of peace and love and with his live performance aimed at conscious ears he said he felt sad that youth today were being serenaded into gangsta styles.
Like so many great musicians Nitin Sawhney doesn’t think of music in terms of genre but more on the feeling it gives you. He found composing music for an eight part TV series Human Planet particularly appealing for that reason and he says as a composer you are trying to capture the essence and the feeling of what’s going on around you.
His song ‘Days of Fire’ from the album London Undersound was written in response to the London bus bomb on July 7, 2005 and the shooting of the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes by the police at Stockwell Tube station in which his friend and musical talent in his own right Natty was caught up in.
With a background in accountancy and law that he believes have stood him in good stead for the business side of the music industry, Nitin Sawhney is so busy as a composer, producer and DJ that he has work booked up until 2018, no mean feat in a time of downloadable music and big chain record store closures. He has scored more than 40 films, popular video games, dance projects and is prolific as a producer and remixing other artists. He was recently at Auckland’s Civic Theatre for “A Throw of The Dice” a silent movie from the 1920’s that he scored the music for.
Don Letts describes himself as first generation British born black, a mantle only to be understood in his formative years growing up in London by looking back at the treatment his Jamaican parents generation received as new immigrants and where the graffiti of the time KBW (Keep Britain White) spray painted on walls reflected the landscape he lived in. Educating himself through music and questioning his place in the world, he found the music of James Brown and Bob Marley incredibly empowering and was a big Beatles fan.
Post-independent Jamaican optimistic sounds of American R&B and Ska led into a growing self awareness and birthed Reggae music as a response to questions about identity, culture and politics.
While Jamaicans were finding their own sound, white youth in Britain started to question how relevant songs like Hotel California were to them and Punk emerged from pissed off white youth.
An organic alliance of punk and reggae was formed as a way to “understand differences rather than trying to be the same”. Don Letts evokes the memory that in the ‘70’s “reggae music was coming through the bedroom walls if you happened to live next to Jamaicans” and this was to eventually infiltrate the UK music scene. The attitude is what Don describes as the essence of ‘punk’, “ it was about turning problems into assets” and when the Pistols and The Clash were picking up their guitars and jumping in, influenced by two films in particular, ‘The Harder they Come’ and ‘Walkabout’, Don saw his way in via filmmaking.
With many films under his belt and almost impossible to get, Don had no easy solution to offer a budding documentary filmmaker, “unless you want to make stories about plastic surgery gone wrong “ and described the internet as mostly ego and make up. With dreadlocks down to his ankles he said it’s important to remember that “anyone can grow hair, it’s better to grow your brain”.
One of the most famous images of Don Letts is the Black Market Clash album cover. He shed some humorous light on this. It looks like he is just about to enter a lone battle with the police but out of shot behind him was a group of rioters, and he was about to get out of the way when the picture was taken. So Don Letts getting out of the way gave him iconic recognition in the punk scene!
Don seeded the Rock Against Racism movement, has made many films including Punk Attitude and Superstonic Sound and is about to reunite with Big Audio Dynamite after 20 years. Although many people of my generation would describe Don Letts as a Legend, he laughingly disputes this and says that when people try to attach that title to him he likes to pull out his oyster card (a travel card for cheap travel around London) to dispute this!
In this age of global idol shows, everyone’s got talent TV shows, celebrity obsessed media, rap artists loaded down with bling, reality TV wannabes and music industry created bands - this was a reassuring sign that Don Letts truly is a legend. Perhaps a more scary thought is ‘who are the emerging artists that will guide Gen Y with the same integrity and wisdom’. But with more children and teenagers at Womad this year there is hope for the future!
- WOMAD NZ was held in New Plymouth, from 18-20 March.