A world in your ear

So, in beginning my long catch-up, as any sensible person would do I'm going to start at the end - with WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance), a world music festival I went to last weekend with my brother. It's freshest in my mind and the thing I'm most enthusiastic about on my list of Things I Need To Blog About, and plus it means I get to make a very satisfyingly naff pun in the title. Also, it is Awesome. There is music you can dance to and people who will not judge you for your crazy/exuberant/downright bad dancing. There is tasty, tasty food from all corners of the culinary world. There are small children everywhere you turn bopping about on their parents' shoulders or running around with funky facepaint on. And there is international solidarity, which is always nice.

Everyone in the world should go to WOMAD, and that includes all of you. It's a plan that can't fail to rock - apart from the logistical problems of getting six billion people into the site at Rivermead, but I'm sure we'll avoid crossing that bridge when we inevitably don't come to it. Sorry, I appear to be rambling.

Anyway. The real purpose of blogging about WOMAD is to big up the exciting, er, world of world music which it's led me to discover. As me and my brother were discussing in the car on the way home, it seems strange that 'world music' is seen as a marginalised, minority-interest genre when it covers about 95% of the music humanity produces. Hell, when you look at it like that (and when you start to see the ridiculously huge diversity within it) it seems mad that it's even a genre at all. Stuff I saw last weekend under the banner of 'world music' ranged from soul to funk to jazz to ska to hip hop to reggae to drumming to folk to salsa to classical and beyond. The fact that all this is lumped together into a genre which collectively gets about as much shelf space in record stores as the 'A' section of Rock&Pop demonstrates its chronic marginalisation.

So. Rant over, time for recommendations. You should all listen to some world music, even if you think it's not your thing. One of my best friends from uni came to a day of WOMAD on a spare ticket; she thought it wasn't her thing too, and ended up going away with a t-shirt and the conclusion 'best day ever'. If I know you well it's likely that I'll be bestowing a compilation CD on you in the near future featuring lots of lovely world music; in the meantime, here's my pick of Bands You Really Should Check Out.

1. Emmanuel Jal - this guy was a child soldier in Sudan and now raps in four different languages about his experiences and the need for peace. If you thought condemnation of war and danceability didn't exactly go together, now's the time for a rethink.

2. Salsa Celtica - It's Scottish! And Latino! At the same time! Listen to 'Esperanza' on their MySpace, or there will forever be a little tiny hole in your life.

3. Mahotella Queens - these three ladies from South Africa are 60-odd year old grandmas who've been playing together for 40 years, through resistance and freedom, and still dance about like mad things on stage and make music that compels you to do the same. [This link isn't to their best album or anything, but it's the only one I could find that would actually let you check out their music.]

4. Salif Keita - He's dead famous in some circles, y'know. Also royalty. At least, he was until he decided that making music (a lower-caste thing) was more important to him. A mighty dude indeed.

5. Ivo Papasov and His Wedding Band - quite, quite mad.

Of course, there are gazillions more, but I could never remember them all now (I saw 43 bands last weekend, all awesome) and this blog entry is quite long enough as it is. If you manage to get all the way to the end of it, check out at least one of the above bands, and leave a comment to prove it, I will be a very happy lady.