World of Music, Arts and Dance
WOMAD (/ˈwoʊˌmæd/ WOH-mad; World of Music, Arts and Dance) is an international arts festival. The central aim of WOMAD is to celebrate the world's many forms of music, arts and dance.
"Womad" redirects here. For the South Korean website, see WOMAD (website).WOMAD has always presented music that they felt to be of excellence, passion and individuality, regardless of musical genre or geographical origin. WOMAD encourages collaboration amongst the artists they invite to perform. The first WOMAD Festival in 1982 had Echo and the Bunnymen join forces with the Drummers of Burundi, and WOMAD Abu Dhabi 2010, saw a collaboration between Tinariwen, TV on the Radio members Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe, Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan (music producer, author), and the French Algerian Mehdi from Speed Caravan.
- The 2021 event was one of the first of its kind due to Australia's unique lockdown rules and a smaller event of 6000 capacity was held in its place.
- WOMAD New Zealand 2021 was cancelled in late 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic complications; because of New Zealand's social distancing regulations during the emergence of COVID, its local organizing committee argued that the financial risk was too high if restrictions were to potentially be reinstated in close proximity to the event.[24][25] - The event did also not go ahead in 2022 for the same reasons, but did recommence in 2023. The 2020 event was one of the last festivals in the world to run just prior to the worldwide lockdowns were imposed.
- The 2020 and 2021 events were cancelled due to the pandemic.
- The 2020 and 2021 events were cancelled due to the pandemic.
Radio WOMAD[edit]
Based on Charlton Park every year since the second year (2008) the UK festival moved there, the official festival radio station is broadcast on a temporary FM licence (usually on 87.7FM) just prior to the festival opening its gates to the public and broadcasts 24 hours a day every day until late Monday after the public gates have closed. Each year the station hosts several exclusive live sessions and interviews from artists playing at the festival across the weekend. The FM signal reaches about ten miles away from the festival site.
During the forced cancellations of the festival in 2020 and 2021 the radio station was set up to broadcast remotely from several of the presenter's homes across the UK and was broadcast live via Mixcloud where listeners could also interact with other listeners and the presenters for the "WOMAD at home" events. The shows showcased several highlights of previous live sessions from their archives. There was also a special live x-mas show in 2021 and two special live announcement shows in early 2022, to tie in with the line-up announcement from the festival, broadcast from station manager Steve Satan's kitchen.