VIDEO
CNN's Steven Wright hits the WOMAD festival
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July 30, 1999
Web posted at: 5:28 p.m. EDT (2128 GMT)

From Steve Wright
CNN WorldBeat Correspondent

READING, England (CNN) -- There aren't many places in which you'd expect to find the following gathered:

  • Gospel music from the Blind Boys of Alabama ...
  • Traditional Zulu dancing from Zimbabwe ...
  • A mix of Latin American music and rock from Bloque, a Colombian group that calls its music "psychotropical funk meets neurotic cumbia" ...
  • And a performance by one of Malaysia's most respected traditional dancers.

But that's just the kind of extraordinary mix that festivalgoers have come to expect from WOMAD, short for the World of Music, Arts and Dance. It's a festival born of an idea that Peter Gabriel and two friends had back in 1980. They loved and were greatly inspired by musical sounds from around the world. Their aim was to create an event that would give people the opportunity to discover and enjoy global sounds.

Some bands, including the Afro Celt Sound System, credit the festival with their success.

"We started the band, we launched the band at WOMAD four years ago," says Simon Emmerson of Afro Celt. "And if it wasn't for WOMAD, you wouldn't really have an Afro Celt Sound System.

"Just over there," he says, pointing to a performance space at the festival, "you have the Whirlygig, where they mix up dance music and techno. Just over there you've got the main stage. And the kind of combination of that -- that made us."

The first WOMAD was held in England in 1982, long before the term "world music" had become a popular catch-phrase for record companies.

Since then, the festival has grown and spread to five continents. This year, there are WOMAD festivals slated for Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Italy, the United States, South Africa and Spain, as well as Britain.

The artist lineups vary as the festival moves from country to country, but the concept remains the same -- to bring global sounds to an audience as varied as the music itself.