Post by Avalanche on Aug 1, 2007 15:10:23 GMT
Well the Avalanche festival season has finally come to a close and it's been an incredible journey. WOMuD was a step too far and I think I need August to recover - the football season is coming to soon!
Peter Gabriel made an excellent start to the weekend with a special set crammed full of guests. I've seen mr Gabriel a few times so I was hoping for something a bit extra and he really did deliver. Opening with Rhythm of the Heat we got a variety of drummers banging away including some fantastic Dhol action and the Zawose family! One of my personal favourites Secret Wold had a rare outing which always brings a smile to Mrs Avalanche too. We also got a flute player on Blood of Eden (I didn't catch the name). The highlight was the, as PG put it, "the Cambodian Ray Charles, Kong Nay - filling in for Nusrat On Signal To Noise, which really was rather outstanding. At the end Daara J came on with soem Senegalese rapping for Lay Your Hands On Me - no stage dive from PG in the 21st Century mind! All wrapped up nicely for the usual encore of In Your Eyes led by the excellent Daby Toure.
(Kong Nay)Well that was just the beginning of teh festival - not the best WOMAD ever due to the crazy weather - it really is rather knackering trudging around in ankle deep sticky mud, especially when you've smoked a bit so we didn't catch as many artists we woudl have like to, but I really enoyed Toumast - Desert Blues from Niger in the vein of Tinariwen - basically an offshoot band. Later on Tinariwen themselves were good but the former just pipped it for me when i had to choose between the two CD's at the rather fine onsite WOMAD record shop.
If it had not been for Baaba Maal headlining Sunday night then we woudl have gone home that morning, but i really wanted to see him - what a disapointment - he insulted the crowd with a half arsed lacklustre performance
Overall I will look foward to next year as the new site holds great potential.
(bit muddy init)
