WOMEX 2013 | LIVE REVIEW
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Thurs 24-Sat 26 Oct
The full five days of WOMEX are the result of over two years of planning, plus considerable time invested in advance to entitle a city to this planning in the first place. Short for World Music Expo, the industry conference-cum-festival is awarded to a different European city each year, debuting in Cardiff for 2013. From the perspective of someone there for the music in the evening, as opposed to the conferences and general industry nattering that takes place in the day, it’s not immediately obvious how much interest it’s generated in Cardiff itself. Whether people are in attendance ‘for work’ or play, though, it’s busy and cheerful all weekend, and the lineup delivers some of the most enjoyable sets of this reporter’s year to date.
‘World music’ is a term which has its detractors: as with any genre, the label sticks more for reasons of convenience than anything, but comes with a more acute angle of Eurocentrism and appropriation. This makes it gently amusing to turn on its head in the form of Georgia Ruth, who opens the programme on Thursday evening and whose songs are equal parts early 70s Laurel Canyon rock, millennial indie-folk and traditional Welsh stylings. In other words, not what’s usually thought of as world music.
Much of the action takes place outside the Wales Millennium Centre, in a tent featuring two stages at 90˚ angles. When one act finishes, another immediately begins to their left or right. So the Cumbia All Stars down tools after 45 minutes of entertaining, mildly over-polished big band cumbia (from Peru, the members are all veterans of the 1960s Peruvian cumbia explosion, where it was crossbred with psychedelic rock; this comes across more on their recorded material, I feel) and, as luck would have it, I’m at the front for South Africa’s Shangaan Electro. They are completely amazing and singularly validate WOMEX being in Cardiff. I have a suspicion that if they were booked to play here independently, it would get a crap turnout; here, however, someone tells me he couldn’t get in the (huge) tent because it was full.
“It’s a brilliant experience on an audio and visual level alike, a glowing example of cultural cross-referencing in this century, and pretty much the polar opposite of ‘traditional’.”
Shangaan Electro is one DJ, Nozinja, and five dancers who sweat buckets and perform incredible moves to Nozinja’s extremely fast and almost uncategorisable music. Its tempo reaches a happy hardcore-eclipsing 189bpm, which we know because Nozinja repeatedly tells us. It’s a brilliant experience on an audio and visual level alike, a glowing example of cultural cross-referencing in this century, and pretty much the polar opposite of ‘traditional’. The music of Mali’s Sidi Touré, while less immediately alarming, also draws from a variety of sources. My grasp of French, in which Touré sings and speaks, is rusty to say the least, but one of his song introductions is to the effect that while there are many different permutations of the blues, it’s all just blues at the end of the day. Accordingly, his guitar style appears equally drawn from his home nation and the American Deep South of the 1930s onwards.
Before attendees on Friday can mellow out to the Welsh-Senegalese duo of Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita, they are given a brief lesson by local personality Frank Hennessy in how to speak with a Cardiff accent. Lord alone knows what people from a different continent make of the notion that a small city’s inhabitants can have a vocal cadence distinct from people who live 20 minutes’ drive away, as opposed to everyone in Britain speaking like Austin Powers or Mary Poppins. Conversely, the music of Finch & Keita bridges several thousand miles without recourse to vocals; performed on their signature instruments, harp and kora respectively, it’s intricate and extremely high-gloss, and reminds me of 1980s new age music more than anything.
Located in the venue’s cavernous Donald Gordon Theatre, designed for operas and the like, Guillaume Perret & The Electric Epic gamely attempt to fill it with beefy jazz-rock. The French group have impressive avant-garde credentials – their last album was released by John Zorn’s label Tzadik; bass player Phillippe Bussonnet is also a member of infamous prog rock band Magma – and marry noir-y atmospheric gloom to crashing and slightly nu-metallish riffs. They’re enjoyable, but would probably be better served by a more intimate setting. Scottish folk-rock band Lau are, I suspect, the kind of thing that comes to mind when people envisage the UK’s contributions to ‘world music’ – a sound that carries obvious hallmarks of its birth nation, in a format that’s accessible and easily exportable. It’s all a bit touristy and Runrig-esque for my liking, although they do cover Lal Waterson’s Midnight Feast, so points for that.
Although Jambinai, a South Korean band who kick us off on Saturday night, could hardly sound less like Shangaan Electro, they perform a very similar role on WOMEX’s lineup. Their music is recognisably rooted in their nation’s folk idiom (they use a haegeum, a Korean stringed instrument), but corrupted by contemporary Western music and a shrinking globe in general. Jambinai’s bag is atmospheric metal and quiet/loud post-rock, which us Britons are not exactly lacking in, but offer one of the most original takes on the sound I’ve heard for a while. Unpredictable structures abound, one song closing with 20 seconds of black metal from out of thin air; when the haegeum is given breathing space, the effect is comparable to Dirty Three. They’re given a rousing reception and could feasibly become pretty popular in Europe, circumstances allowing.
“Don’t go in there! It’s terrible. It’s horrible!” A middle-aged gentleman leaves Filastine & Nova in search for some pearls to clutch, and a barrage of gnarly noise is thus anticipated. An American currently living in Spain, Filastine operates in a similar way to DJ/Rupture, a peer of his: electronic music drawing influence from a wide range of global sounds, and expressly aware of its political context. Nova, a female vocalist from Indonesia, gives the tangled breakbeats a haunting quality; Filastine leavens his music with wit, creating rhythms on a shopping trolley which he introduces as “a traditional instrument of my people”. The problem is not that it’s terrible or indeed horrible, it’s that it’s far too quiet, due to the Donald Gordon Theatre having no soundsystem per se. In a club, this would have been belting.
WOMEX’s final ‘host nation’ act 9bach are a wilful attempt to bridge the traditional and modern, repurposing extremely old Welsh folk songs in an indieish manner. They’re very personable, especially frontwoman Lisa Jen, but (for this punter at least) are only a palate cleanser before Ebo Taylor and his band, who close the festival in the tent. The Ghanaian guitarist was a friend of the late Fela Kuti, and made LPs in the 70s and 80s which linked African highlife and funk/rock in comparable fashion; now aged 77, Ebo performs with inspirational vigour, and seems fit as a fiddle. The set is groovy as heck and, while reasonably leaning on the two albums he’s recorded in recent years, peaks in aceness with Love And Death, originally from his superlative 1980 release Conflict. He soaks up the applause graciously, but Wales ought to be grateful to have Ebo Taylor performing here. Hard to quarrel with something like WOMEX if it can engender such things.
words NOEL GARDNER
photos: YANNIS PSATHAS