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home » festivals » WOMAD » WOMAD 2012 » reviews

WOMAD offers a vibrant alternative to the regular festival landscape

WOMAD 2012 review

published: Wed 1st Aug 2012

WOMAD 2012

Friday 27th to Sunday 29th July 2012

Charlton Park, Upper Minety, Malmesbury, Wiltshire

£135 for three days

daily capacity: 40000

last updated: Mon 23rd Jul 2012

30 years, an anniversary they are happy to be celebrating, and in that time WOMAD has only made a profit for three of them, so the ethic clearly isn't that they are delivering this wonderfully colourful, global flavoured event for the money. However with 37,000 on site this year (a WOMAD record) you have to wonder if they haven't made one this year will they ever?

With such record numbers enjoying one of the few hot weekends of sunshine and sandals the festival never felt over crowded, but sometimes busy, and at times the food queues reflected this at 'traditional meal times'. The site is not sprawling but fairly compact, with five music stages (with three more offering workshops or dance and two late night venues. It's small enough to make it possible to catch at least two of the acts performing on any of the two or three stages in action at any time, and so it affords the chance to either stay where you are when an act begins and soak up the atmosphere or head off to explore a completely new global sound.

The cost of bringing these international acts here is probably more than you think, and their musicianship is such that they must surely be national stars in their respective homelands and thus command decent booking prices. Much of the profit margins must go on bringing new acts to WOMAD crowds, it's something the festival has been doing since it first started at The Royal Bath and West Showground back in 1982. This year landowner Viscount Andover confirms the flagged festival will be back at this it's present home for another four years.

Putting on such a wealth of acts must be no mean feat in itself, many of these acts are not playing to any other UK festival crowd this weekend. The variety of acts from all around the world makes WOMAD dare to be different in a festival landscape where much of the line-ups are repeated throughout the summer months at events up and down the country.

It's only here in Malmesbury that you can watch the incredible musicianship of Linton Kwesi Johnson & The Dennis Bovell Dub Band who get the crowd dancing on Thursday, or the visually stunning spectacle of The Manganiyar Seduction by Roysten Abel

review by: Scott Williams