George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic, Baabaa Maal, and Ibrahim Maalouf are among first acts to be announced for this year’s WOMAD.
Once again, it’s time to download WOMAD’s Spotify playlist and start preparing to explore the family-friendly grand celebration of culture that is the World of Music, Arts and Dance festival. A feast of diversity, WOMAD returns to Charlton Park, Malmesbury for the tenth time this year with a run of fantastically exotic tastes, sights, and sounds.
With the first acts being announced as diverse as the “commander-in-chief of the psychedelic end of the funk spectrum”, George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic, one of the most colourful and revolutionary men of doo wop, self proclaimed wanderer and powerful storytelling Senegalese superstar Baabaa Maal, and French-Lebanese award-winning silky jazz trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, WOMAD’s looking primed to turn out their usual wonderful mismash of cultures under the flags of its tenth birthday site.
All of this is alongside the festival’s sweeping array of colourful stages, poetry shacks, cosy tea tents, relaxing yoga classes, and the forest-filled World of Wellbeing.
Other acts released so far include the Hot 8 Brass Band (New Orleans), Aziza Brahim (Western Sahara/Barcelona), Sidestepper (Colombia), The Grit Orchestra (a Celtic tribute to fusionist Martyn Bennett), Baloji (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Pat Thomas and the Kwashibu Area Band (Ghana), Desert Slide (Rajasthan), and This Is The Kit (England).
With only a small, although delicious, morsel of the festivities announced so far, and many more acts, food, kids and arts releases still to come, early bird and Christmas special tickets are already sold out!
Filled with far flung (and more local) talent, food, arts, and activities for children, WOMAD’s tenth birthday of being held at Charlton Park, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, will take place from the 28th-31st of July 2016. Buy your tickets here.
