Filed under: Text | Tags: Adelaide, community broadcasting, community radio, Live music, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Terem Quartet, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
Filed under: Text | Tags: community broadcasting, community radio, Live music, podcast, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
Make sure you check out some of our podcast/downloadable performances now available!
More to come over the next few days, but please enjoy the wide range of music and interviews available – relive WOMAD from your computer!
My favourites performance so far are Joseph Tawadros, The Black Arm Band and hearing Cesaria Evora’s band has had me pondering how amazing she would have been with them! 
I also highly suggest you get involved Roger Holdsworth’s discussion on the westernisation of world music: http://serendipsy.wordpress.com/2008/03/08/kong-nay-and-ouch-savy-workshop/
It’s a fascinating discussion and we’d love to hear more points of view!
-JB
Filed under: Text | Tags: australia, community broadcasting, community radio, Live music, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
We’ve met some amazing artists from all around the world over the last two days and now for us from the ComRadWomad team it’s our opportunity today (Sunday) to go and soak up the music and the atmosphere on the last day of WOMADelaide for 2008.
Our broadcast last night heard some amazing performances, and you can expect more to be uploaded here soon for your listening pleasure.
Well, its been a big weekend already, but that certainly isn’t going to stop me from getting my dancin’ shoes on for this last day of WOMAD 08!
-JB
Filed under: Text | Tags: cambodia, community broadcasting, community radio, culture, freedom, freedom of expression, kong nay, mekong delta blues, ouch savy, racism, racism in music, Radio Adelaide, unconscious racism, westernisation, westernization, Womad, Womadelaide, workshop, world music, worldwide music
I must admit I love the little workshops on the smaller stages. I just came back from an open chat with Cambodian Master Kong Nay and Ouch Savy: his student and one of only three women in Cambodia currently learning the chapei dang weng (Cambodian flat-bodied, long-necked lute). As well as a moderated interview, there were questions from the audience about the location of his music within Cambodian society, freedom of expression, the overt attempts by the Khmer Rouge to eliminate artists and folk cultures (Kong Nay himself was one day away from execution, saved only by invading Vietnamese troops) and much more. They both played and sang a song or two and explained their meaning.
Kong Nay has been called the Cambodian Ray Charles – perhaps an unfortunate parallel because he was blinded by smallpox at the age of 4 years. Similarly his music has been called the Mekong Delta Blues – yet he only heard a recording of Leadbelly a few days ago.
A personal aside here: so why do we attempt to locate music in terms of our western perceptions? Perhaps in an attempt at establishing familiarity and easing us into understanding? Or is it – more dangerously, an unconscious racism where we place ‘our’ music at the centre and can only hear others’ music when we control it, tame it, name it – place it into our western context. Isn’t that the very antithesis of the inclusive ethos of ‘worldwide music’? If we continue to only hear the chapei tradition as ‘the Cambodian blues’, fado as ‘ the Portuguese blues’ and so on – then we DIMINISH all these traditions by making them subservient to, subsets of, our western culture – and there’s a short path from that to the hegemony of commercial pop music. Wotcha think?
-Roger Holdsworth (getting controversial here at WOMADelaide!)
Filed under: Text | Tags: Adelaide, Broadcasting, community radio, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
Coming to you LIVE on Community and Indigenous Radio
Womadelaide 2008 LIVE!
6pm-Midnight EST – Check your local station
OR listen online via Radio Adelaide – http://radio.adelaide.edu.au/listen.rm (Realplayer required)
-JB
Filed under: Audio, Images, Text | Tags: Adelaide, Broadcasting, community radio, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
Filed under: Text | Tags: Adelaide, Broadcasting, community radio, Mista Savona, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
Just came from a seriously fine set of skankin’ roots-reggae with Melbourne’s Mista Savona. A fabulous array of some of Australia’a best reggae players.
My picks form opening Friday night were Romania’s great gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks – the original pogoing punk music! – and the veteran soul-gospel singer Mavis Staples, who was in fine form and voice.
Looking forward to tonight’s broadcast and live sets from Peruvian diva Susana Baca and Malian master kora player Toumani Diabate fronting his massive Symmetric Orchestra.
Hope to have your company on-air for our 6-hour broadcast!
- Seth Jordan
Filed under: Text | Tags: Adelaide, Broadcasting, community radio, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
WOMADelaide 2008 isn’t just about the music. It’s a total experience, with stalls, food, ’street artists and performers’ and so on. And after dark a whole other world opens up, with lights in trees, glowing globes and so on.
Chief amongst these displays is that put on by French installation artists La Compagnie Carabosse (the Wicked Fairy Company). This year (as they have in the past … and at similar festivals, including the Festival in the Desert in Mali) they have draped the park with flaming pots and other fire ’sculptures’. Long strings of flame arc up into trees (quaternary curves of combusion); giant globes of flaming pots hover in mid-air suspended from cherry-picker cranes; fiendishly hot metal cylinders glow red as they funnel heat into jet-engine-like exhausts. There’s a risk on a hot evening of coming too close, but you can wander among and sometimes under these fire trails.
To me, the most interesting part of all this is the tension these installations create between beauty and fear. We’ve become so accustomed to the dangerous power of fire in the Australian bush, especially in our summers, that the juxtaposition of the Botanic Park’s trees and the raging pots of fire evoke elemental concerns. Do we want to admire them, run from them or hunt for the nearest extinguisher?
The Park is alive at night with music, crowds, lights and fire. And fear.
-Roger Holdsworth
Filed under: Text | Tags: Adelaide, Broadcasting, community radio, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
Soooo………Bands a plenty, roaming performers, fire sculptures and the all pervasive heat.
Friday night at WOMADelaide.
After spending some time chatting to Michael Winter of Taraf de Haidouks and trying to glean some wisdom from the Soul Jazz crew, I hit the arena to dance shoulder to shoulder with the audience. Taraf blew me away. They aint the prettiest of bands and there is something definitely seedy about their presentation, but when they stared their wild double time punk gypsy rhythms, it was on. You get used to seein young bands keep up the pressure in 3 minute rock and punk anthems, but most o these guys are old enuff to be MY father and they rocked. Whisked over to see Beirut for about 15 mins (Im catchin a full set tonight) and there are no superlatives that can describe his show. Smooth, melancholy and danceable…..More later. Black Arm Band delivered their big band sound including John Butler as guest and the anthems rolled out…….I want new music from these guys. Love them anthems but time for the young guns to step up and get stuck in.
Mavis Staples told us all how to do it. After chuckling and telling us she aint takin on the Queen of Soul Aretha, she snatched the crown and never looked back. With a blistering attack of Respect Yourself this pint sized woman reminded us of the grit and dirt of original soul. She sang her guts out and we were all the better for it!
Snuff Puppets delighted us all with their newest member, Karem the African Elephant and we all danced under the stars to Soul Jazz Soundsytem….though it could have been way louder.
A few hours sleep some breakfast at the Adelaide Markets and now I’m off to see Mista Savona, have a chat to him and Nickodemus and then gussy on up for the broadcast tonight…….is still hot!
Later
-Systa bb
Filed under: Text | Tags: Adelaide, Broadcasting, community radio, John Butler Trio, Radio Adelaide, South Australia, Womad, Womadelaide, world music
Well, we’ve had one night of very special performances already (Which I’m listening back to right now!) and the stage is set for an amazing Saturday night. We’ll be broadcasting all across Australia tonight from 6pm-Midnight (EST) This site will be updated regularly throughout the night with interviews, performances and photos from our backstage tent.
If your local station isn’t broadcasting you can listen online courtesy of Radio Adelaide:
Listen online (Realplayer required)
Right now I’m listening to John Butler Trio performing “Funky Tonight” – You can hear and download this powerhouse performance (and others!) if you scroll down the page!
-JB
