Festivality

Festivality Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

We’ve just arrived back from the UK, took the train from Huddersfield at 5:32 this morning and arrived at Stansted at 9:55 for the 11:30 flight. So much more relaxing than driving down (as long as the trains all work). We went to WOMAD in Wiltshire and had a fine time. It was such a contrast to last year’s Somme like mudfest. The weather was glorious and there was no mud, none, zero, we could sit where we liked when we liked and we didn’t have to watch small children screaming for their mummy becuase their wellies had been swallowed up. WOMAD attracts a certain type, it seems, they read the Guardian, liberal with both big and small l, they call their children Demelda, Grizelda, Cain and suchlike and some of them consider good parenting making sure their kids can roll a proper joint. We learnt all this from the comfort of our tent, because our neighbours easily demonstrated why they are called the chattering classes. They do go on, and on and on. It didn’t help that 99% of the accents we heard would have made a BBC announcer feel plebean.

Still, that’s a minor quibble. The festival itself was great. One of the things I like about it is that you can discover so much new and excellent stuff. So; the highlights then. Well for me, the best band we saw was a French group called La Còr de la Plane who sang in Occitan. There were seven of them, five with tambourines (both with and without metal bits) and they got everyone up and dancing using nothing more than their voices, their drums and some clapping. Another French band was Babylon Circus who opened on the main stage on Saturday and had the place jumping with their Madness/Mano Negra/ska/balkan/punk stuff. Both Liz and I tended to head for the European acts, Paprika Balkanikus (a foursome who played gypsy music from Hungary down to Serbia) were excellent. Even the Austrian yodelling provided by Hotel Palindrome was a chirpy piece of entertainment.

The one band I had wanted to see, Son de la Frontera, didn’t disappoint. They closed the festival and we got to the front (which at womad, involves turning up maybe 10 or 15 minutes before they start) so we could see their feet. Very important for flamenco. They were terrific, just two guitarist and three others who provided the clapping singing and dancing. The main dancer was fantastic, we had had a taster workshop on flamenco dancing the day before so we could have at least a tiny appreciation of how bloody hard it is. The only downside was that Pablo, the master dancer, unfortunately looked exacly like Henry Winkler… not HW as the Fonz in Happy Days, but how he is now (or was maybe ten years ago) and as soon as I mentioned that to Liz she started giggling. Still, it was a fine end to the proceedings.