Womad

Gala Performance with Billy Cobham and more...

18:15 27th July on the Siam Tent

The weekend's performers come together...

One of the cornerstones of the WOMAD/Real World empire has been to encourage free-flowing exchange of ideas through musical collaboration. And if the participants know nothing about each other before this exchange began, so much the better. Look at those Real World Recording Weeks in the '90s where performers geographically continents apart often brilliantly discovered they shared a sizeable plot of common ground. (Incidentally, these recordings are now seeing the light of day under the Big Blue Ball banner) So, while artists from all four corners of the globe are inhabiting the same patch of Wiltshire parkland, it makes perfect sense to stick a few of them onstage together to see what happens. Hence this gala performance involving plenty of this weekend's guests. Drumming colossus Billy Cobham is the ringmaster, marshalling the likes of Justin Adams, Bassekou Kouyate and David D'Or to musical heights. The loose spirit of the show suggests that the full list of runners and riders will be rather fluid until right before the off, so expect the unexpected.

Biog by Nige Tassell