By Martin Vennard
BBC News, Charlton Park, Wiltshire

World music’s biggest and best-known festival, Womad, was turned into Woe-mud at the weekend by the heavy rain earlier in the week.
But Womad, which quit its old home in Reading for a new site in Wiltshire this year, still managed to celebrate its 25th anniversary in the presence of thousands of appreciative fans, and include a headline gig by the festival’s founder, Peter Gabriel.
It was something of a homecoming for the former Genesis star as his Real World studios are only just down the road, and he was joined on stage by family and friends. It was something of a greatest hits affair, with fans voting on his website for the songs they wanted to hear.
Blood of Eden, No Self Control, Sledgehammer and Solsbury Hill all made it onto the playlist.
He was accompanied by the “Cambodian Ray Charles”, Kong Nay, for Lay Your Hands on Me. And he was also joined by Mauritania’s Daby Touré for a rousing version of In Your Eyes.
The ground was turned into a thick chocolate sauce that had fans squelching in their wellies between the stages, but Womad lost none of its Bohemian qualities. The men’s communal showers were opened to women as I was getting washed, while middle-aged people clomped about the site in fairy wings and tutus.

Slightly bemused

It may have taken an hour-and-a-half to drive the few miles from the M4 motorway to the Charlton Park site but the reggae of Toots and the Maytals soon had smiles back on the faces of some stressed-out drivers.
Chambao are one of a crop of Spanish groups who have emerged in recent years by mixing traditional with modern. They performed flamenco with soul and rap, while Lila Downs wore her very long hair extensions and Mexican/American heritage with pride.
Her performances are what painter Frida Kahlo might have come up with if she had formed a mariachi band.
With a new location and the weather to compete with, the normally strict Womad timetable went array several times, while Viscount Andover, who helped bring Womad to his Charlton Park estate home, was still getting to grips with the site.
He had to consult a map when asked the way to one of the stages.

Such was the expectation for Cesaria Evora that she was wildly applauded before even opening her mouth in the Siam Tent on Saturday. She seemed slightly bemused by the fuss.
Cape Verde’s most famous export hardly spoke between her often sad and soulful songs, and she only really moved when she sat down to take a cigarette break while her band played on.
But by the time she finished with Besame Mucho she had certainly moved the audience.
Sea of mud
The contrast with Candi Staton could not have been greater. She had the tent singing and dancing as she switched from soul to gospel to disco, taking in her own Young Hearts Run Free and Elvis’s In the Ghetto.
Dry islands started to appear in the sea of mud as the sun shone on Saturday, but the heavens had opened again by the time The Imagined Village premiered their live show in the evening.
Simon Emmerson of the Afro Celt Sound System had invited musicians such as Billy Bragg, Martin and Eliza Carthy, Johnny Kalsi of the Dhol Foundation and Sheila Chandra to reinterpret some traditional English folk music.

They were joined on a video screen by dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah for a reworking of the 15th Century poem Tam Lyn.
Isaac Hayes headlined in the pouring rain on the outdoor stage but his famous gravelly voice still managed to put some soul into the night.
Clube do Balanco from Brazil had people sambaing in their wellies on Sunday.
David D’Or from Israel set Jewish prayers to music, his powerful voice calling out to people around the site. And he had the crowd dancing en masse to the Jewish folk song Chava Nagila.
By the time local lad Jamie Cullen and his brother Ben made the short trip down the road from Malmesbury the skies had turned blue.
Jamie’s jazzy, funky pop may not be traditional Womad fare but he and the crowd leapt to it. The brothers tried out some of their new material, including an improvised number called… Womad 2007.
The organisers said they left Reading because Womad had outgrown the site there. Charlton Park is certainly much bigger, but it needs the benefit of good weather before it can be properly judged.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/6922409.stm
Published: 2007/07/30 12:45:52 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Published: Sunday, 29 July, 2007, 02:28 AM Doha Time

By Clarence Lusane

WASHINGTON: Some of the world’s most respected and venerable leaders have recently stepped forward to help take care of our global village.
Last week, coinciding with the 89th birthday of former South African President Nelson Mandela, the ‘Elders’ group was unveiled in Johannesburg, South Africa. It consists of global statesmen and stateswomen from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
Constituting collectively hundreds of years of political and diplomatic experience of the highest order, the group seeks nothing less than a transformation of the world by taking on some of its toughest issues, such as Aids, global warming, war and other concerns. By asserting its moral and political authority, the star-studded group hopes to turn around a world that has become stubbornly brutal for billions.
In addition to the legendary Mandela, the group includes such eminences as former president Jimmy Carter, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Irish president and human-rights activist Mary Robinson, and Nobel-winners Bishop Desmond Tutu, imprisoned Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and microfinance pioneer Mohamed Yunus.
The group is the brainchild of British billionaire Richard Branson and rock musician Peter Gabriel. Branson approached Mandela in 2001 about the concept, and along with Gabriel has raised $18mn to get the project going for at least the next three years.
The individuals in the Elders are not constrained by narrow political ambitions, popularity polls or nationalist sentiments. Many have spoken out passionately against the Iraq war and the global war on terror as violations of international law and human rights standards.
Carter’s most recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, breaks a tradition of US leaders’ refusal to speak out about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Aung San Suu Kyi is currently under house arrest in Burma for her efforts to bring democracy to that nation.
Reportedly looking more frail than expected and using a cane at the July 18 gathering, Mandela’s role will likely be circumscribed and somewhat limited in a physical sense. But he clearly is a first among equals. As he approaches the 45th anniversary of his arrest on August 5, which led to 27 years of an unjust imprisonment, the sheer weight of his legacy and lifelong commitment to social justice is inspiring even to this group of luminaries.
More than 20 years ago, then-Republican Dick Cheney voted against a US House of Representatives resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela from jail. Now, Cheney enjoys the scorn of the global community, while Mandela holds the status of the world’s most respected statesman, a status further cemented by the formation of the Elders.
Change can occur sometimes more rapidly than can ever be imagined.

– The Progressive Media Project/MCT

* Clarence Lusane is associate professor in the School of International Service at American University in Washington; he wrote this for
Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues. Readers may write to the author by e-mail: pmproj@progressive.org.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=163607&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 30/07/2007

Mark Hudson reviews Womad at Charlton Park, Malmesbury, Wilts

As Peter Gabriel launched into his anthem of the open air, Solsbury Hill, I and several thousand other Womad-goers were picking our way through acres of thick, elastic mud in semi-darkness.
And there’s something poignant – or perhaps pathetic – about hearing a song about striding up a Wiltshire hillside while clambering through a real-life Wiltshire bog, particularly when the situation is largely man-made.
After 17 years at a leisure centre in – of all places – Reading, our premier world-musical festival has moved to the more rarefied atmosphere of an aristocratic estate. Yet the feeling is that this famously laid-back event has been woefully under-prepared for weather conditions that were known about months in advance.
With two stages engulfed by flooding, vehicles stranded and the main thoroughfares a vast mud bath, Womad – notably friendly to families and older people – makes the young people’s festival Glastonbury look like a model of efficiency.
Yet it is still possible to encounter the kind of magically unexpected moments that have become Womad’s trademark.
Making my way into a wood through which swirling shadow patterns were being projected, I came upon a tiny stage on which the Malian lute master Bassekou Kouyate and his group, Ngoni Ba, were belting out their densely percussive music to a small but clearly enchanted audience.
Saturday dawned warm and sunny, and Cape Verdean diva Cesaria Evora got a huge response for her easy-shuffling rhythms and majestically unhurried delivery. Arizona’s Calexico created a similarly dreamy feel, blending mariachi trumpets and swooning pedal steel guitar in a hallucinatory Mexican border vibe.
As the predicted rain commenced at 8pm sharp, the hyper-energy of the Asian Dub Foundation’s agit hip-hop proved just the thing to revive the soggy and depleted crowd.
Britain and Asia met again in the Imagined Village, an attempt to reinterpret English folk song in the light of what Britain now is, with veteran folkie Martin Carthy joined by Billy Bragg and various British Asian musicians. If it felt a touch worthy at times, there was a sense of being in on the birth of something new and exciting.
Whatever else Saturday’s headliner, Isaac Hayes, might be, he is not new, and despite the super-tightness of his band, his performance soon descended into tired cabaret funk in which the man himself seemed to have little interest.
But then, just as you were wondering if this could really be the man who created the inspirational tension of the Theme from Shaft, he launched into an extended version of that very number, carrying the dialogue between wah-wah guitar and stabbing chords to a pitch of excitement that almost topped the pure genius of the original.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/07/30/bmwomad130.xml

Peter Gabriel thrilled last night’s enormous WOMAD crowd with a stunning set that went on into the late hours.
The co-founder of the festival returned to the stage to mark the event’s 25th anniversary.
An array of special guests, including the Zawose Family, Daby Touré and Kong Nay, joined him on stage throughout.
“It was 25 years since we started this whole thing off, so we wanted to try and do a few things to make it a landmark, so I was resurrected,” said Mr Gabriel.
The former Genesis legend played a high-octane hour-and-a-half set, which included many of his old favourites.
He left the huge, energetic crowd begging for more, especially after firing out two of his solo classics, Solsbury Hill and Sledgehammer, back-to-back.
Sarah Penhaligon, who has made the trip from Cornwall for the festival, said: “With all the different guests he had on stage there was a real magic to it – it was very special.”
John Merriman, 27, of Moredon, London, said: “It was a first-class performance.
“It was great, he did all his big hits and he was awesome.”
Mr Merriman’s brother Philip, 20, added: “It was absolutely fantastic. It’s the first gig of his I’ve been to and it was incredible – I’m converted.”
Their dad David, 59, said: “There are lots of things I am trying to do before I am 60 and this was my first live concert, and it was a great way to start.”
Other highlights of the day included Jamaica’s “godfather of soul” Toots and the Maytals, who lit up the main stage in the afternoon.
Toots, the first man to use the word “reggae”, gave his thoughts on WOMAD and its ethos backstage after his performance “I love it,” he said. “You have just got to live good and be loving to each other.”
Mexican singer Lila Downs also put on an eyecatching display on the main stage yesterday evening to precede Mr Gabriel.
The performances were all a welcome distraction from the ever-worsening mud at Charlton Park.
Tractors have been busy pulling cars out, while an ambulance even became stuck in the main arena yesterday afternoon.
Revellers are having to trudge through pools of mud as they attempt to navigate their way round the festival.
WOMAD co-founder and artistic director Thomas Brooman said: “This weekend has been really hit hard by the weather. It’s been so cruel to us.”
However, the majority of people are doing their best to make the most out of a bad situation.
Susan Hall, 37, of Bournemouth, said: “It is pretty bad in a lot of places and moving around can be a little difficult.
“But it could be worse and everyone’s in the same boat.
“If anything, it has almost made the atmosphere even better.”
With a sunny forecast for today and the prospect if Isaac Hayes performing tonight the WOMAD crowd look to be in for a great day.
11:55am Saturday 28th July 2007

By Gordon Simpson

http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/headlines/display.var.1580309.0.gabriel_thrills_womad_crowd.php