WOMAD March 2011

---

You know you are at Womad when you can hear an American musicologist talk about his life while New Zealand indie darling Lawrence Arabia busts out hit single Apple Pie Bed in the background.

We went to New Plymouth for WOMAD at Brooklands Park where about 35,000 people gathered to sample the international diversity of more than 350 performers, there to entertain us on six stages with dance, art and music.

We were entertained by an array of international musicians, including the legendary Bob Brozman, a performer and ethno-musicologist who has travelled the world studying the ancient roots of music. Brozman plays resonator guitars, an instrument created in the 1920s before the electrical guitar was invented. "This sound changed my life," says Brozman, who found two of the instruments in a pawn shop when he was 13-years-old. He finally retired the instruments 10-years ago and now plays their stunning re-creations. A roving anthropologist since 1972, Brozman has travelled to moer than 60 countries, his mission to discover how people around the world have interpreted the guitar and to learn their art.

Womad kicked off to the devotional sufi music of Faiz Ali Faiz from Pakistan, whose beautiful vocals filled the natural grass amphitheatre from the main stage, perched above a lake. Faiz Ali Faiz was followed by Aotearoa's dubstep sweetheart, Tiki Taane.

Taane was joined by members of Shapeshifter and his son Charlie Te Maram (Chico), who darted back and forth across the stage, wearing protective yellow air muffs. The crowd looked like a sea of sunhats from the hill above, swaying to Tiki's bats, old and new, including the first single off his new album, Summertime.

On that same stage later that evening, Hanggai played under the blazing sun. Born from China's punk scene but with roots in Mongolia the six piece combined electric guitars with horsehead fiddle and tsuur flute. Clad in traditional Mongolian clothing, Hanggai were a visual and auditory sensation that had the crowd dancing with abandon.

From STUFF

---

Photos

17 Hippies
Kick-off band. They only had 12 Hippies.....

Main Stage
Main Stage