Wood Festival 2022
Braziers Park, Wallingford, Oxfordshire

WOOD FESTIVAL is well established as one of the most family-friendly festivals in Britain and, broadly speaking, the music tends to fall into two main categories — folk-tinged Americana or Afro-dance fusion.

Representing the latter category are five-piece WEMA, at the heart of whose sound lies a combination of acoustic Tanzanian sounds and vocals with heavy electronics.

This set was their first ever live show after two years of online collaboration.

The result is a string of blissful and compelling atmospheric grooves, sparse electro-beats providing the perfect backdrop for the sophisticated melodic progressions of a range of instruments including mbira (thumb piano), the zither-like zeze and a type of Tanzanian harp that sounds to my untrained ear like a sitar.

Fofoulah take us from east to west Africa, with a sound based around the Wolof rhythms of Senegal.

Starting as they mean to go on, they burst onto the stage with an up-tempo percussive frenzy, eventually joined by a trance-like bassline over which glide saxophone and vocals.

The band play with a natural fluidity that flits between exuberant intensity and contemplative reflectiveness with consummate ease.

One standout track moves seamlessly from an almost highlife-feel sound, to dub reggae to jungle, with a rhythmic intricacy which is a joy to behold.

Sometimes the festival’s cross-cultural fusions are completely accidental. Drawn to the stage by an ingenious soundclash of looped lo-fi electronics, Tom Waitsy vocal ramblings, and virtuosic Irish tin whistle, it was only en route that I realised the latter was coming from a completely different stage.

Yes, the Ramshackle Ceilidh band and Oxford-based US cult legend Thomas Truax had unknowingly collaborated to found an entirely new genre, and I am honoured to have been one of the few people in a radius of about 15 feet who witnessed its creation.

Having a moshpit entirely comprised of under-tens can sometimes bring out a different side of even the edgiest of performers, and Truax is a case in point.

As I arrived, he was playing pied piper to a snaking line of children joyously following him and his guitar through the crowd, before returning to the stage to tap out a waltzing rhythm on “the Hornicator,” the horn of an old gramophone.

Passing through various effects, the result was something like the echoing belch of an Ickabog deep in his underground lair.

Much of Truax’s warped storytelling focused on animals, such as Jimmy the Spider, wreaking revenge on the wedding reception which ruined his hangover, and the Butterfly, on the run from a man intent on nailing her to a board.

Accompanied by a range of homemade instruments, such as the Stringaling, comprising a host of springs, toys and rubber bands, and the Slinkopator, the most ingenious drum machine I have ever seen, made of a bike wheel with protruding spokes which bang things on their way round.

For my money, it was really Truax who stole the show, a beautifully weird and beguiling performer who captivated kids and adults alike.

For more information visit woodfestival.com.