Review: WOMADELAIDE 2020: DAY 3 at Botanic Park

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Sunday 8th March 2020.

There is more to WOMADelaide 2020 than just the broad spectrum of music and dance on offer.

Around the Stage 7 area, for example, there is the Taste the World tent, where Festival performers leave their music and dance performances to demonstrate the cooking of a dish or two from their home countries. The Frome Park Pavilion offers exhibitions and discussions across a wide range of contemporary topics in the Planet Talks series. As the World Tipped, a performance by Wired Aerial Theatre, an aerial theatre company from the UK staged nightly. It was in this busy, but somewhat secluded area, that my legs begged me to rest for a while.

I found myself between acts on Stage 7 and the Taste the World tent was just what my legs had ordered, the opportunity to sit on a chair, in a comfortable and shaded tent in concert-style seating, listening to performers' tell their personal stories while cooking a favourite dish from their homeland, in a series of sessions hosted by Rosa Matto. The session that I found myself watching was to be presented by members of the Spanish Medieval Ensemble, Artefactum.

Having thoroughly enjoyed their engaging performance on stage at both a musical level and as a piece of light-hearted, educational, and very entertaining theatre, I was very much looking forward to seeing what these irreverent academics would get up to. The plan, it would seem, was for two dishes to be prepared at the same time. The Medieval viola player and singer was going to prepare a Spanish omelette with potatoes, capsicum, and onions, while the hurdy-gurdy and portative organ player had the more complex, stuffed bread roll dish known as Easter Horns in mind.

Two cameras set up at each end of the preparation area allowed us to see the processes in close up on two screens at each side of the stage. The recipes were provided to the audience, and we could follow along as the two men defied and altered them at every opportunity.

The process was great fun to watch, as Matto and the cooks tried to work around the language barriers by using a mixture of Spanish, English, Italian and the occasional bit of Latin, while the mischievous musicians dramatised every flourish of knife and spatula. The dishes were completed, and a small serving of each was offered to every member of the audience. It was fabulous fun, and my legs were thrilled with the opportunity for a rest. The recipes are available online, here.

After the gastronomic mayhem of Taste the World, Stage 7 was host to a very unlikely musical collaboration. The celebrated Welsh harpist, Catrin Finch, and renowned Kora player, Seckou Keita, met by chance in 2002 and have since forged an extraordinary musical partnership.

The number of strings available to the two players boggled the imagination as Keita had two Kora onstage, one of which had two necks, each neck housing 21 strings, and Finch's concert harp boasted 47 strings plus fully chromatic tunings available via the seven pedals. They seemed to use every available note in their performance.

These two virtuosic players wove their countless strings together in a soft embracing cloth that settled over the enthralled audience like a weightless, shimmering, rainbow-hued blanket, Keita's gentle voice wafting the fabric as it soared from the loom that they had created before our very eyes.

The Kora spoke Welsh with fluency and rhythm that would rival that of the great poet Daffyd Ap Gwilym, while Finch's harp spoke of the history and tradition of Welsh folk music in some stunningly evocative pieces.

Suddenly the harp became a Senegalese percussion instrument as Catlin Finch's knuckles rapped onto the soundbox between staccato chords on the strings, while Seckou Keita's Kora strings rippled in fluid flourishes of notes at impossible speed. An extraordinary fusion of two very different musical styles by two players, who could not have more diverse backgrounds, was made to appear simple and natural and totally homogenous. Witnessing it was an almost religious experience.

As I headed back towards the central area of the Foundation Stage and the Global Village, I was cut off by a stream of excited children in headphones, and more than a few equally excited adults, running and yelling and laughing in an arm flapping, joyous murmuration. I followed them, at a more stately pace, back to the Kids' Zone, which appeared to be their point of origin.

Kids' Zone is a separated area of considerable size, reserved for activities and events just for children, and is one of the many things that set WOMADelaide apart from other music festivals of similar size. The area is filled with obscure structures; woven huts filled with dangling ribbons, tents, and shade houses, curious animal sculptures, and an army of people there to care for and entertain the younger festival attendees: face painting and craft workshops, storytelling and dance workshops, ice cream and ice blocks, and a safe, shaded place in which to play. After the third child looked at my beard and announced that Santa is here, I decided to leave Neverland and my Peter Pan aspirations behind me and head back to the real world. It was time to scour the food stalls and sate my other senses.

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