WOMAD Charlton Park review

This was our 5^th WOMAD, 3^rd at Charlton Park. We always do the early arrival thing on a Thursday and leave on the Monday, almost making it a holiday in itself. This year the pricing structure was altered, teenager tickets being cheaper but Thursday night camping more expensive, overall for us the cost was the same as last year with two adults, two teenagers and a child. Despite the increased first night charges Thursday this year was busier than ever, I’d say the majority of festival goers arrived on the Thursday. This meant quite long queues to get into the campsite and one or two car park staff getting overstressed and losing control. Once in though the vibe was the same, relaxed and very family friendly, even through the odd shower.

The music starts Thursday evening with just a few bands and after setting up and catching up with old friends we were ready to start the festival proper. First band I saw were The Skatalites. A great start to the weekend, lively, one of those bands who’s name I knew and I discovered I knew their music too, they went down a storm. For the rest of the weekend it was a matter of musical grazing, only the most enthusiastic world music fan could hope to know who all the bands were and what to expect. The programme goes into good detail about each artist and helps if you want to plan your day but my advice is don’t plan too strictly. Obviously there were a few artists I really wanted to see and none disappointed. Friday’s headliner Solomon Burke performed with the enthusiasm of someone less than half his age and he played many classic tunes. Peter Gabriel played a fantastic set on Saturday night in support of Witness.org a charity devoted to helping people expose human rights abuses by the use of video and the web. The set started off with a string section playing covers with Peter and the band, Paul Simon’s Boy In The Bubble coming in for very interesting treatment. After that the show was all Peter Gabriel’s own music, plenty of crowd pleasers biased towards the ‘So’ album finishing with a spellbinding Biko.

Another artist with widespread appeal was Youssou N’Dour. His set on Sunday wasn’t dampened by the rain that started falling steadily that afternoon as he performed to a huge audience. Other than that I had a number of surprises as ever, just stopping and listening to the different stages and hearing a range of music that I think would be impossible to achieve anywhere else. A criticism of mine of the bigger stages is that the photo pit was far too deep forcing quite a distance between the band and audience in some cases where intimacy would have been wanted by band and fans alike.

But this festival isn’t only about the music and the WOMAD charity. Aside from Peter Gabriel’s charity support, Oxfam were painting the faces of anyone who stood still long enough blue, and photographing the results to make a petition to send to Downing Street to demand action on climate change. Many charities had stands, the favourites of my partner being the many 2^nd hand clothes stalls, my youngest daughter’s pick of the bunch was the vegetarian society who were handing out lovely free choc n’ nut cookies, even to confessed meat eaters such as myself.

There are many adult workshops on offer with subjects from yoga, Tai Chi, dancing of all kinds, percussion and drumming from all parts of the world, likewise singing, beatboxing, to cooking. The list and variety of childrens workshops is too long to go into here but despite the number of workshops and their diversity booking is essential or turn up in good time as places are limited and they are all free.

The stalls selling clothing and instruments seem to me to have become predictable, even with the layout change this year which made the site feel smaller but no more crowded, there were no surprises although the kids did enjoy sifting through all the trinkets and bracelets on offer. There was a greater choice of food this year with every flavour of the world catered for and speaking of food, the Taste The World tent was superb with artists who had performed on stage cooking and playing their music in an intimate space. Acetra from the Spanish/Portugese border offered a real feast for carnivores, Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan by contrast singing dancing while a very tasty vegetable curry was cooked and then handed to the audience.

As usual there was Carter’s Steam Fair to keep the youngest (and some older, well I do have to check the rides are safe don’t I?) festival goers happy with bumper cars, a waltzer, helter skelter, merry go rounds, all the fun of the fair. A ride or two made a good reward at the end of the day if they’d behaved themselves.

The World of Well Being is a calm wooded area with various alternative treatments on offer, anything you can think and a few I’d never heard of. Gong Bath anyone ? This is a great place to establish a day camp if you are in a party of families, the kids have room to run around, and you can relax, talk, drink, whatever, as the arena sound doesn’t intrude on this area. The Radio 3 stage is close by but the music performed there is always very good, if you notice it you’ll like it.

Overall this year’s festival was really enjoyable, on the campsite you can see many groups of families camping together and some communities of tents feel like small villages with three generations of families and friends together. Since moving to Charlton Park the atmosphere feels even more child friendly and safe. Niggles were that there seemed to be fewer toilets but those that were there were cleaned more often and on occasion some were reserved for children’s use. Bizarrely, on the Monday morning the campsite toilets near us were cleaned fairly early and then locked, only two or three left open for use while the campsite was still pretty much occupied, long queues resulted until campers took the initiative and started unlocking them for themselves. Also the showers weren’t as good as last year, luckily the weather wasn’t as hot either. The showers weren’t at all hot and they weren’t so much showers as dribbles. And worst of all for me the selection of excellent ales rapidly diminished as the weekend progressed, by Saturday afternoon although the beer available was first-rate, the variety wasn’t.

 We’ll be there next year.