Review: WOMADELAIDE 2019 - DAY 4 at Botanic Park

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Monday 11th March 2019.

The Taiwu Ancient Ballads Troupe were the first musicians on stage on the last day of WOMADelaide 2019, and they filled the huge Foundation Stage with their 18 piece ensemble. I had already seen the ensemble perform a stunning set on Stage 2 on Saturday but, as I heard the sound check in progress before lunch, I realised that this was to be a completely different presentation to the all but a cappella show I had witnessed two days earlier.

This time the choir, of mainly children's voices, was joined by instrumental accompanists on guitar, bass, percussion and keyboards and, although this offered an easier to understand 'grounding' to the songs, the overall sound was no more full than the earlier performance. The instruments did provide a very solid foundation for the works though, and the percussion, in particular, allowed some of the more fluid songs to be perceived rhythmically more easily by western listeners. This was another stunning performance from an exciting and fascinating group of musicians steadily getting on with the work of preserving a vital and beautiful historic tradition of the indigenous music of Taiwan.

I was very keen to see the Sharon Shannon Band on Stage 2, and was obliged to head over there before the Taiwu Ancient Ballads Troupe had completed their set, in order to secure a seat before the performance began. Such is the WOMADelaide dilemma. If your intention is to see a particular act, from a particular viewpoint and in comfort, then compromises must be made. The best viewing spots fill up with great speed, and it is only by arriving at a stage early that a good vantage point can be secured, and I made sure that I secured mine.

Sharon Shannon is almost certainly the most accomplished button accordion player in the world. Her playing is astonishingly clean, crisp and accurate and her unusual 'off the left leg' technique defies physics and the normal constraints of human anatomy and, as she launched into her first piece, that was all too apparent. She is a 'virtuosa', no I haven't invented the term it simply means a female virtuoso, on the button accordion, and has single-handedly lifted the instrument's status worldwide by her playing of traditional and more contemporary works. Her name is spoken in whispered reverence in traditional Irish music circles, but she has been known to carve a merciless path into more contemporary genres.

Her first offering was so crisp as to be almost brittle, the playing so tight and clean in its delivery despite the incredible speed of the piece, that the notes sat independently of each other in a microsecond of isolation, every one of them given the player's utmost attention and respect. It was an accordion master class, demonstrating a mastery of the instrument that less than a handful of players in the world could recreate, and then the electric guitar solo deflated me like a punctured air mattress, and the harsh reality of the stony ground below me dug into my once comfortable back. It was a country and western solo if ever I've endured one. It took the sublime accordion playing, evoking an idyllic Irish postcard landscape, down a dingy back alley somewhere behind a bar in Nashville. It was beautifully played, and to my ears, awful.

This was followed by a Bob Dylan cover, complete with an American accent, then a cover of Janis Joplin's Piece of My Heart, even a reference (tongue in cheek I hope) to the iconic Smoke on the Water riff, before a rather hackneyed interpretation of Steve Earle's Galway Girl. By this time I was running away as fast as my short and aged legs could bear me, wracked with disbelief and disappointment. I'm told that the punters loved it.

My hasty retreat led me into the welcoming arms of Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, who were preparing to start their set on the Foundation Stage. The instant they began to play I was transfixed. Their sound was absolutely massive but superbly subtle. The Southern Italian band from Puglia, at the very heel of the Italian boot, play authentic Italian music with a distinct scent of the very modern seamlessly woven into their totally engaging performances.

A dancer in pure white spins in careless fervour as the band draws the eager audience into its inescapable web of impassioned exuberance for life, through melodies and songs that seem older than time itself. Frame drums beat out an excited heartbeat as the zampogna, the bagpipe that is the very soul of Southern Italy, calls out in joy and cries out in anguish and pain as the ensemble take us on our journey, to cure us of the Tarantula spider's bite via the frenzied ritual of Tarantism. This was an impassioned and very genuine offering from these masters of the music of Southern Italy and the addition of more contemporary instruments and musical influences only served to highlight the power and the passion of their performance.

The distant and sometimes underestimated Zoo Stage can often offer a more intimate experience to a smaller audience, with its 'tucked away' ambience and, like the Moreton Bay Stage, could easily be mistaken for a 'side stage', a less than celebrity venue. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both these outlying stages offer an area of relative acoustic isolation from the three main stages that often host the larger or louder ensembles, and seem to attract a very discerning audience, perhaps seeking a more personal experience than those offered by the larger stages with their enormous areas for the dancing hordes.

The Moreton Bay Stage hosted Rebetien this afternoon. A Greek ensemble playing Rebetiko, a sort of Greek blues. Their playing was superb and so authentic that the most unlikely of dancers emerged from the very large crowd that had come to see them. The seated performance was undermined by middle-aged Greek men and women who could not restrain themselves from dancing to the music that ran through their very veins. It was so engaging to watch these people dance, and I and my fellow observers were transported to the islands and to Greece itself as we saw the power of this beautiful and beautifully delivered music take control of the usually more restrained members of the WOMADelaide audience. I was briefly, and joyfully transported to Greece, but, sadly, without ouzo.

The Zoo Stage itself was shortly afterwards held by Maarja Nuut & Ruum. Two Estonian experimental musicians who play a host of electronic instruments and devices as well as Maarja's more familiar violin and vocals. To compare Ruum to a synthesiser player is to compare a tiger tearing the very flesh from its prey to a wealthy restaurant patron eating lobster thermidor. He uses no user-friendly interface like a synthesiser, he rather accesses the oscillators directly through his less than user-friendly board of dials and switches, he manipulates electronic sound generation in real time. To suggest that he improvises downplays the complexity of what he does. He actually 'makes' electronic sounds and then convinces them, presumably by magic of some sort, to submit to his will. It was structural chaos. Complex chords building, searching for a resolution. The swirling, whirling, pulsing sound building and building, dark and angry, intense and insistent, peaking and fading to single sustained notes.

All the while Maarja is making loops of violin phrases or just harmonics, which she calmly layers live. When satisfied, she adds a keyboard riff or two before adding a looped vocal track of lyric-less sounds, ethereal and angelic or sometimes demonic, before adding text to the underlying soundscape. I have no idea what she was singing, although she often explained the content and context of the songs, "a young girl had lost her birds and went in search of them", but the sound of her voice, sometimes over, sometimes under the pulses and wails and squawks of Ruum's were in a language so foreign that it became another instrument in the mix. I was totally transfixed.


The Silkroad Ensemble, now taking over Stage 2, was first formed by the cello maestro, Yo-Yo Ma, 20 years ago and, although he no longer performs with them, they remain a virtuosic ensemble of extraordinarily diverse musicians from all over the world. The inevitably ever-changing cast of this extreme ensemble are clearly classical or at least academic in their backgrounds, but membership of this elite outfit would appear to be their opportunity to let their hair down, and they do so without reservation. The performances are often solo or duo based with the rest of the ensemble either sitting out or supporting the featured performers, but entire ensemble pieces formed a substantial part of the brilliant performance.

They are superbly professional in their playing and boast some of the best players in the world amongst their number, so it isn't surprising that their performances are so breathtaking and engaging in the extreme. This is truly a World Music supergroup that demonstrates everything that WOMADelaide stands for, but at such a level of musicianship that few others could compare. Because of my particular penchant for all things bagpipe, I selected this band as my personal pick of the festival this year after I heard Doctor Cristina Pato play the gaita (Galician bagpipe) with them, but there were several others that ran a very close second.

I had underestimated the WOMADelaide 2019 festival on my first reading of the performers invited but I was, once again, proven to be wrong, and happily so. This was a superb offering.

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