Colourful festival wows New Plymouth, New Zealand

WOMAD Festival in New Plymouth, 18 – 20 March 2011.
New Plymouth is located at the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand.

New Zealand’s west coast city of New Plymouth is about to be set alive with music and dance, by a huge festival designed for all ages and tastes – WOMAD.

This year’s WOMAD (world of music and dance) is the seventh to be held at New Plymouth’s unique Bowl of Brooklands site – considered one of the most stunning natural venues in the world.

The 2010 the event was attended by more than 35,000 people across three days and this year’s festival is expected to attract an ever bigger crowd.

As well as 30 hours of music on seven stages, WOMAD features workshops, a global village, food stalls and presentations, a Kidzone and the option to camp at the nearby race course.

International music
The artists at WOMAD are drawn together from all over the world, to celebrate many musical styles, moods and cultural identities.

2011 acts include:

• Tray So: Three Sounds – who perform traditional Cambodian love songs, lullabies, songs of loss and mediation. The group uses exotic instruments including the evocative sneng made out of animal horn and traditionally used to summon elephants.

• Local act Tiki Taane, who has become one of New Zealand’s most popular and diverse award-winning artists – Taane’s debut album Past Present Future achieved double platinum sales and the single Always On My Mind rose to #1 on the NZ music charts.

• Taranaki’s Patea Maori Club, which first grabbed the nation’s attention in 1984 with the Maori waiata / song Poi E – which clocked up 22 weeks in the New Zealand music charts, peaking at #1 for four weeks.

International mix
The artists join an outstanding line-up of performers from every corner of the globe delivering musical styles from calypso to afro-celtic, Inuit throat-singing to Mongolian rock, ska-fused rockabilly to electronica and everything in between.

Artistic director Drew James says the line up is the best yet: “It really is a who’s who of world music complemented by fantastic New Zealand acts to create an extraordinary festival.”

More than one thousand artists have performed at WOMAD festivals worldwide, bringing more than 100 countries to a live audience of over one million people.

Food
WOMAD artists from around the globe will team up with New Zealand celebrity chef, author and broadcaster Peta Mathias to bring audiences a taste of their homeland.

Peta Mathias will host cooking demonstrations on the Taste the World stage, alongside international artists 17 Hippies (Germany), Rango (Egypt/Sudan), Calypso Rose (Trinidad & Tobago) and more.

At each live demonstration, artists will share a traditional dish unique to their homeland, serving up enough food for 40-50 audience members to sample, accompanied by music and conversation.

An adjacent bar called the WOBAR gives audiences the opportunity to enjoy refreshments and relax in a cafe environment.

New initiatives
WOMAD 2011 features three new initiatives – an extensive project for Taranaki schoolchildren and members of the community, a workshop programme in the new Dance Zone, and the Village of Wellness.

The new project includes music and hula workshops with Mana Maoli, percussion and dance workshops run by Cairo-based Sudanese band Rango and costume-making workshops with Tarja Parbbruwe at the Govett Brewster Gallery.

A new Dance Zone in the Kunming Garden, will include interactive dance workshops and demonstrations with live music, Brazilian workshops in samba, hula from Hawai’i, and Chinese dragon and lion dancing.

Maori and Pasifika dance workshops will also be offered in the Te Pae Pae area, and Columbian group Sidestepper will present workshops onstage.

Another addition to the festival, the Village of Wellness will offer festival- goers a place to revive their bodies, minds and souls with massage, spiritual readings and foot spas.

More information on WOMAD

The first ever WOMAD festival was held in Shepton Mallet, United Kingdom in 1982 and has now grown into an internationally established festival that brings together artists from all over the world.

Since then WOMAD has held more than 160 festivals, in 27 countries including Austria, Finland, France, Italy, Singapore and Turkey.

The festival celebrates the world’s many forms of music, arts and dance, and aims to excite, inform, and create awareness of the worth and potential of a multicultural society.

Festival co-founder Peter Gabriel says: “Music is a universal language, it draws people together and proves, as well as anything, the stupidity of racism.”

WOMAD is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “biggest International Music Festival.”

Over the past three decades the WOMAD production team has put up over 3450 marquees, 60km of fencing and 7590 WOMAD signature flags.