Review: WOMADELAIDE 2022 - DAY 2 at Botanic Park

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Saturday 12th March 2022.

Day 2 of WOMADelaide promised to be another fairly heavy day, from a musical viewpoint, with Baker Boy performing another afternoon show on the Foundation Stage, and Azymuth & Marcos Valle even earlier on stage 2.

It was with that in mind that I ventured down to stage 7 to hear the Crooked Fiddle Band, having read that they employ Nyckelharpa, a traditional Swedish multi-stringed instrument that is bowed, and fretted by the use of tangents or pins, that are activated by the use of keys in much the same way as a Vielle à Roue or Hurdy Gurdy, and Cittern, a plucked stringed musical instrument that was popular in the 16th to 18th centuries, in their performances.

Their opening gambit was a superb violin solo that incorporated double-stopping and pizzicato at the same time. That is to say, the musician was bowing two strings at once, producing harmonies to the melody line, while simultaneously rhythmically plucking strings with the left hand. Tricky stuff. Sadly, from my point of view, the set soon developed into something a great deal heavier and, in my opinion, considerably less subtle. It would seem that my expectation of another fairly heavy day was playing out. I wandered off.

As I approached stage 2 Azymuth & Marcos Valle were in full flight. The Brazilian trio play, musica popular Brasileira, a trend in post-bossa nova urban popular music in Brazil that revisits typical Brazilian styles such as samba, samba-canção, and baião and other Brazilian regional music, combining them with foreign influences, such as jazz and rock, Wikipedia informs me.

The description sounds wonderful, but to me, the sound coming from the stage was rather dated and quite derivative. I happened to have run into an old friend, and musician, who was performing at the festival himself, and we had a fun, if rather self-indulgent time, trying to identify the sources of some of the very familiar riffs that we were hearing. I wandered off.

I found Grace Barbé performing on stage 3 and it was a very welcome discovery. Barbé is from Seychelles and sings from behind her electric bass, accompanied on stage by an electric guitarist and a percussionist, and, while the music that they produce is strongly rhythmic, combining tropical beats with Afrobeat and reggae, it does not have a driving relentlessness but rather an engaging subtlety.

Her voice reminded me strongly of Angélique Kidjo, and has a similar gentle insistence that can swiftly become less gentle and considerably more insistent. With lyrics in Creole, French, and English the songs are supported by her polyrhythmic bass lines, intelligent percussion, and an electric guitar that can leap from picked glissando arpeggios to soaring solos. I stayed for the whole set.

Valanga Khoza played in the Frome Park Pavillion, which is a new venue for the WOMADelaide site. It is a comfortable, open-sided pavilion, that is used in the main for seated performances and for The Planet Talks series of lectures and discussions. It offers two other very important things for WOMADelaide audiences, chairs and shade, and I took advantage of both while enjoying the songs and stories of political refugee Valanga Khoza.

The enigmatic trio, Glass Beams were to play on stage 7, and I was intrigued to see them after a conversation with a dear friend who manages the Moreton Bay Stage. She told me that they had played their first gig on her stage on Friday, not their first WOMADelaide gig, but their first gig together ever with this lineup. Brave stuff. They wear masks that appear to be made from glass beads and, after a little research, I found a snippet of information. "What heightens the Glass Beams allure are the dazzling masks each musician uses to obscure their identity. Created by a Russian jeweler, they ensure the music exists separate from the musicians, keeping the focus exactly where it should be."

The lineup of electric guitar, bass, and drums is a familiar one and suggests a particular sound, but the music that they produce is a blend of east and west, Indian rhythm structures and scales are aligned with polyrhythmic Kraut Rock pulses. All the pieces are instrumental, save for some harmonised vocalisations, and the playing from each member of the ensemble is little short of virtuosic, but as to who those players are, I'm afraid that I do not know. It was quite uplifting in a slightly psychedelic way.

Luluc played at the Zoo Stage and the duo lightened my heavy day considerably. Songwriter, Zoë Randell, and multi-instrumentalist, Steve Hassett, delivered a beautiful set of dark folk songs that were riff rather than chord-based, and had a wonderful open feel to them. Understated and introspective, the songs are quite dynamically flat, which offers a very calming almost hypnotic feel to them and Randell's voice is quite mesmerising on its own. I allowed myself to wallow in that space between reality and fantasy that good poetry, well delivered can trigger, and I was reminded of listening to early Incredible String Band concerts with the same sense of bliss.

My heavy day was not so heavy after all.

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