Live Review: WOMAD Charlton Park 2018

Headliners such as Leftfield, Amadou & Mariam, Omar Souleyman and Thievery Corporation did not disappoint, performing to huge audiences on the Open Air Stage. However, it was a handful of lesser-known acts who stole the show for many of the music critics. Soweto seven-piece B.C.U.C. were singled out in The Guardian and Financial Times for their rousing Sunday evening performance of South African township music in the Siam Tent. Their set took the form of expansive percussion led songs that lasted over twenty minutes, and had the audience wholly engaged from the outset in what frontman Jovi Nkosi declared would be a concert to go down in history. It was a wildly kinetic and a spiritual experience for the huge audience, who threw themselves whole-heartedly into the band’s objective of ‘reaching the ancestors’ through the music.

With over 35,000 attendees, there was plenty of excellent music on the smaller stages for those who wanted to avoid the crowds. On a scorching Friday afternoon, those who retreated to the shade of the arboretum were rewarded with the beautiful Estonian folk of Mari Kulkun on the Ecotricity stage, which included a love song to reindeer, as well as Malawian viral sensation Gasper Nali and his one-string bass.

As the festival site is deconstructed for another year, WOMAD finds itself front and centre of national headlines, with co-founder Peter Gabriel issuing a statement on the visa controversy and asking ‘Do we really want a white-breaded Brexited flatland? A country that is losing the will to welcome the world?‘ For the 35,000 happy festival-goers at least, they couldn’t imagine anything worse. The Evening Standard described WOMAD as ‘an extraordinary multi-racial festival, so open to the world‘, whilst The Independent heralded it ‘utterly unique‘.