Review: WOMADELAIDE 2023: DAY 4 at Botanic Park

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Monday 13th March 2023.

The final day, and I already feel like I have run a marathon. I missed the Gosti workshop which is disappointing, but there's always something new to see at WOMADelaide.

Taraf de Caliu are every bit as good as I was told they would be, in fact they are better. As Taraf de Haidouks, the original band name, they were awarded the 2002 BBC World Music Prize for Best Group in Europe and the Middle East, so it is not surprising to learn that they collaborated with some great players, such as Yehudi Menuhin and the Kronos Quartet. Led by the violin of Georghe 'Caliu' Anghel, they play traditional music from Romania with an absolute fire in the belly drive but, for me, it is the cimbalom that draws my attention. The instrument looks like an Edwardian coffee table but is, in fact, a form of hammered dulcimer that, on the inside, looks like the guts of a piano with multiple courses of strings played with soft hammers. It's completely mad and I want one, but at CZK 140,000, which is around the 10,000 Australian dollar mark, it may have to wait.

ADG7 filled Stage 3, the nine piece Korean ensemble play traditional instruments but the music they produce is a fusion of traditional and contemporary, almost pop forms and they do like to put on a visual show as well, in sometimes bizarre costumes and with choreographed moves.

There is so much to choose from at WOMADelaide that often it is difficult to decide whether to stay for a whole show or to rush off to another one on the musical shopping list, and yesterday I had fallen in love with the Dili Allstars, who were playing at the same time on Stage 7. Time for a hike across the paddock again.

The Langan Band were playing at the Pavilion, which is becoming my favourite WOMADelaide venue. It's contained, roofed and seated and is everything the tired older gentleman needs by around 7.00pm on the fourth day of an audible ordeal. These three lads of the Scottish persuasion are just brilliant, with a massive range of styles and genres that they have welded together to form a something else. One minute a gentle folk trio, the next an outraged punk band, then a swing band, before settling into a Gypsy Jazz vibe, all in the space of one song.

The Moroccan psychedelic rock band, Bab L'Bluz played Stage 7, conveniently close to the Pavilion and even more conveniently close to the least overworked toilets of the festival. Hypnotic rhythms, extraordinary hand made instruments, and insistent vocals, take every ageing hippy back to Marrakesh, but the band's range goes well beyond the nostalgic sounds of Morroco in the 60s and 70s, as they morph into a very contemporary soft rock outfit.

Rizwan Muazzam Qawwals, on Stage 3, took me back to my first ever WOMADelaide, in fact it was everybody's first WOMADelaide in 1992 when the two Pakistani brothers, Rizwan and Muazzam's uncle, was performing the same material. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was known as "the Voice of God", and his performances at that festival, 31 years ago, left me in no doubt that his nickname was no joke. I have been a fan of Qawwali music ever since, and to have it performed by the nephews of the greatest exponent of the style in recorded history is not something that anyone would want to miss.

Youssou N'Dour & Le Super Étoile de Dakar took over the Foundation Stage, and my sense of déjà vu was amplified tenfold, because Youssou N'Dour had played the 1992 festival, too, and so, might I add, did I. I was loathe to break the happy memories of that first WOMADelaide, so I let Youssou N'Dour be the last thing that I would hear in the 2023 festival.

Now all I have to do is have a good sit down and write about it all.