photo: Dave Gouldie

WOMAD – CHARLTON PARK MALMESBURY – 23-25 JULY

Now in its fourth year in the lovely grounds of Charlton Park, WOMAD is now very much at home in its rural Wiltshire setting. This year’s programme featured enough legends to draw the crowds but as ever it’s the little surprises that make the festival so special. So while Horace Andy certainly lived up to expectations sanctifying Friday afternoon with his righteous voice, it was another group of Jamaicans who proved one of the highlights. 2010 seems to have heralded the revival of mento with the story of The Jolly Boys filling the broadsheets, but for Lanford Gilzene, the lilting folk music that gently rocked Jamaica before ska has never gone away. Armed with a banjo and rumba box, his Blue Light Mento Band laid down an infectious beat that was halfway between calypso and reggae. Born on the plantations, the hidden messages in songs like ‘Wings of a Dove’ provide a narrative that belies the joyous music.

An equal story of musical empowerment revolves around Staff Benda Bilili from the Congo. Discovered playing in Kinshasa zoo by Vincent Kenis, the producer behind Konono No. 1, this group of polio afflicted homeless musicians have ignored the cards that were dealt them, releasing the joyous ‘Tres Tres Fort’ LP and featuring in a forthcoming documentary. While their raw rumba leaning set justified the Songlines Award and the big crowd that had gathered by the open-air stage, a much quieter but deeper WOMAD debut would unfold later that night on the stage dedicated to the late and much missed Charlie Gillett. Still remarkably in his twenties, Cedric Watson exudes the cool manner of a musical elder, leading his band Bijou Creole through an incredible set of blues drenched zydeco. Southern soul with a difference, that Charlie would have loved.

WOMAD was rather light on the jazz this year but Tokyo’s Soil & Pimp Sessions more than made up for that, taking the roof of The Big Red Tent with their sax powered punk jazz. The great thing about WOMAD is that many of the same crowd pogoing to Shacho and his group’s death jazz could be found the next evening sitting in reverential silence at the Radio 3 Stage (where Dele Sosimi had provided a killer set of soulful Afro-beat the night before) to listen to the stunning oud player Khyam Allami & percussionist Andrea Piccioni. The result of a BBC World Roots mentoring programme, which has paired the young Iraqi Londoner with his Italian master, the pair produced a stunning set of evocative acoustic music heavily indebted to the ancient journeys between Arabia and Europe. An even more sacred message had been translated the previous afternoon when WOMAD stalwarts Rizwan- Muazzam Qawwali were reaching the higher ground with their devotional sufi music. As each year passes these nephews of the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan seem to reach nearer to the spiritual levels of their Uncle. More transcendental music around lunchtime on Sunday lunchtime was slightly marred by the programming, that had us tearing ourselves away from the deep locked groove of Ethiopia’s Geat Krar Collective, past the trance inducing Takht Al Emeret from UAE, to the Siam Tent where Rango were waiting. ‘Lords of the Trance’ proclaimed the programme and the Sudanese collective more than lived up the billing, providing a heavyweight assault of percussion and penetrating chants. By the time they returned to close the festival in the Siam Tent late on Sunday night, word had got around and despite killer sets by everyone from Salif Keita to Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou this year’s festival felt like it belonged to Rango.