News

That was that…

After a long preparation process – i.e. a little over to and a half years – we have now executed Womex in Copenhagen. For the first time out of three. Together with the parent company Womex, based in Berlin, we have focused our efforts on the just finished weekend.

2700 business people, including about 1000 programmers and bookers, flocked to Bella Center during the day and in the evening to the venue Koncerthuset to see concerts, approx. 15 every night on 5 stages. From the purest traditional music to mash-up in a cakophonic mix.

Well-attended concerts

The world music club Global (do check out the fantastic programme on www.globalcph.dk) also made room for a handful of very successful concerts where both locals and visitors from abroad queued up to get in – a.o. to Colombian act Bomba Estéreo and Congolese act Staff Benda Bilili. The latter received the WOMEX 09 Artist Award for World Music.

Good news for the Malian music scene

At the same event, Rokia Traoré received the first Roskilde Festival World Music Award for her newly founded Foundation Passerelle. Passarelle intends to start up training and initiatives that can create a decided music industry in Mali as we know it from wealthier countries. Roskilde Festival is, as you may already know, a non-profit organisation with the purpose of supporting social work all over the world. We are crossing our fingers for the project and promise to monitor it closely.

Exciting music experiences

The previous week has not offered much music transmitted through iPod or the stereo but on the other hand lots of live music. Allow me to mention the following highlights:

Bomba Estéreo (Colombia). Already at this summer's Roskilde Festival you could experience this charming band from Bogota serve up its incredibly contagious, psychedelic cumbia. At Global they should have played a one-hour show, but when I Ieft the club they had set the dance floor on fire and begun their second hour. A fantastic band.

Staff Benda Bilili (Congo).  Perhaps not the greatest of musicians – but what this group of polio-stricken survivors from Kinshasa could not start up with pure musicality, they certainly did with the addition of will and engagement. In the daytime at Bella Center they showed us why they won the Womex Award for lifelong efforts – despite the fact that they have only released one album. Later at Global they had started a groove that really rocked the house.

Deba (Mayotte/France). This group of women came from The Indian Ocean, and with a rare grace they exploited such simple tools such as singing, a little percussion, handclaps and synchronized dancing to delight its audience. They just needed 10 minutes to entangle the audience in a musical universe that seemed difficult to be seduced by. Pure sufi treats!