ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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What a Womad wants
GEORGE FOGARTY asks why the great music of the colonised isn’t accompanied by an equally great political discussion
(L) Haitian- American Leyla McCalla (R) Palestine’s original rap outfit DAM
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Womad Festival
Chartlon Park, London
THE Womad Festival, now in it’s 42nd year, has always had a political edge. Indeed, the showcasing of artists predominantly from the majority world in the heartlands of their former colonisers could hardly avoid the traces of that relationship, and is pregnant with commentary on it, regardless of the extent to which it is explicitly articulated.
But explicitly articulated it often is, and a spirit of joyful defiance — of coloniality, of chauvinism, of borders and boundaries of all hues — is in many ways a defining characteristic of many of the acts here.
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