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Womad festival review – wildly entertaining treasure trove for adventurous music fans
Radically inclusive global lineup includes Sampa the Great’s feminist pizzazz, Young Fathers’ twisted genre-splicing and Bixiga 70’s full-tent conga
Saturday afternoon brings the Björk-like glamour of the Tunisian-American Emel, and with her one of the weekend’s most powerful moments: silent news footage of Palestinian children talking about their dead parents playing on screen as her incredible multi-octave voice soars through the space. Female-heavy folk groups also provide gorgeous melancholy, from the gothic charge of Hack-Poets Guild (Nathaniel Mann swinging a pigeon-whistle through the audience to accompany the voices of Marry Waterson and Lisa Knapp) to duo the Breath (signed to Peter Gabriel’s label, Real World). These include weirder outfits like the brilliantly programmed Deerhoof (still sounding great after 30 years) and South Korea’s Sangjuru (whose thunderous, sawed traditional instruments mix with spry Talking Heads-style bass-funk).
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