Womadelaide

Posted at 10:00 PM, Monday, March 9, 2009

WOMADelaide is one of the world's great music festivals. It sources its musicians from Womad, the mother of all world music festivals, and so has access to the very best musicians in the world. The festival takes place over the first weekend in March at Botanic Park, directly across the street from the synagogue. At services at 6:00 p.m. on the Friday, we hear the alluring rhythms drift in and call us out to dance.

Two factors had kept me away from Womadelaide until this year: the cost and the weather. The cost is significant--$180 for a single weekend pass at the group rate. For those who attend all 30 hours of the festival, it's only $6 per hour, which is quite a deal. But that's more than I'd ever paid for a single entertainment experience, and I was a bit daunted. Even more daunting is the issue of the weather. There is just no way of predicting what the weather will feel like doing in early March. In many years, this week marks the return of rain, and concert-goers sit through the performances huddled under rainslickers and blackets. Last year, infamously, the temperature stayed above 105 for the entire weekend. I have one congregant who was so heartbroken at the miserable weather that she decided not to buy a ticket for this year. I joined with a group of Beit Shalom members and purchased my ticket in mid-February, then watched the weather reports fretfully in the days leading up to the big event. The weather was absolutely perfect--warm, but not hot days, and cool nights. As services concluded on Friday evening, I strapped on my concert wristband, strapped on my knapsack (complete with water bottle, snacks, sweater, insect repellant, tissues, and more), and strolled across the street to my first Womadelaide.

The music was just fantastic, and so, for the most part, were the crowds. By the end of the weekend, I had developed serious ISSUES with cellphones and digital cameras. Transcript of a tyypical cellphone conversation, generally during the first song of a performance: "Hello?! Can you hear me?! Okay! I'm about fifteen metres from the stage. I'm holding a glass of beer in the air and waving. I can see you! Can you see me now?! I can see you! Can you see me?!" And so on. And then there were the digital cameras. Here is the technique employed by most would-be photographers: take out your sleek little camera, elbow your way through the crowd until you're standing in front of a much shorter person (me, for example). Now hold your camera at a 45 degree angle up from your face so that you can capture your own personal, grainy and fuzzy video of the artist performing and post it to You Tube along with 35 other grainy and fuzzy versions.

Favourite Womadelaide moments: The quiet and graceful performance by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. This extraordinary singer-songwriter from a small island off the far top end of Australia was the one performer I'd heard of in advance of the festival. It was my privilege and pleasure to crowd in with perhaps 10,000 other listeners enjoying his gorgeous music. And, by contrast, there was Rokia Traore, the stunningly beautiful, infectiously joyous singer from Mali. She started playing at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday and played straight through until 11:15 p.m. She displayed more verve and energy in her spectacular 20 minute encore than she had at the start of the show, which I consider a major accomplishment. It was a terrific ending for the weekend.

Ultimately, I had a very mixed Womadelaide experience. My ticket entitled me to bring along children for free, and I had been looking forward to a splendid weekend with the kids. But neither Yonatan nor Nadav showed any interest in sitting down and listening to the music. They wanted to get their faces painted and partake of the crafts workshops I'd failed to sign them up for in advance. When I dared to suggest that maybe it might be nice to listen to one of the performers, they were deeply offended.They endured Womadelaide for three hours on Saturday, and then I hauled them home for a night of old cartoons on Disney while I blissed out on Gurrumul and the Australia Dance Company.

And then, late on Sunday morning I was struck by the worst rabbinic occupational hazard: I received word that a much beloved member of the synagogue had suddenly died, and everything sort of collapsed. After spending time with his family, I was compelled by powerful forces to hang out with the kids, which meant not going to Womadelaide. We spent a pleasant afternoon watching a busker out for the Adelaide Fringe and wandering through the Botanic Gardens, with music from Womadelaide drifting in. I made it back for the last four hours of the festival, which was plenty joyous and provided lots of opportunities for therapeutic dancing and yelling--most of all, during Rokia Traore's performance!