HISTORY
WOMAD Festivals are family-oriented, diverse and active musical events; sometimes offering as many as seven stages within the festival site.
There are also participatory workshops, where the audience has a chance to meet and learn about the visiting artists and their music. Special events for children, including organised workshops and activities, create an experience both educational and entertaining.
The festival location in each country is as important to its atmosphere as the music and dance that it presents.
The first ever WOMAD festival was in Shepton Mallet, UK in 1982, artists performing included; Peter Gabriel, Don Cherry, The Beat, The Drummers of Burundi, Echo & The Bunnymen, Imrat Khan, Prince Nico M' barga, Simple Minds and Ekome amongst others.
Audience size has varied from 98,000 at WOMAD in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park (this was the highest attended ticketed outdoor event in the world in 1993) to much smaller intimate audiences of a few hundred at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, for example.
Womad Line Up - 2011
Gogol Bordello (USA), Afrocubism (Mali/Cuba), Dhols of Jaipur (India), Nathalie Natiembe (Reunion Island), Mungo's Hi-fi (Scotland), The Boxettes (UK), Shunsuke Kimura & Etsuro Ono (Japan), Alejandro Toledo & the Magic Tombolinos (UK), Ebo Taylor (Ghana), Lau (UK), Brassroots (UK/USA/Greece), Samuel Yirga (Ethiopia), Booker T Jones (USA), Donso (Mali/France), Khaira Arby (Mali), Le Trio Joubran (Palestine), Ballake Cissokho & Vincent Segal (Mali/France) and many more...