Fact #165716
When:
Short story:
The thirteen-day long 1983 WOMAD Festival begins at The ICA, London, England, UK, Europe. Artists appearing over the course of the whole event include The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, The Durutti Column, Peter Hammill, Misty In Roots, Dick Gaughan, 23 Skidoo, Kanda Bongo Man, Test Dept., Rip Rig and Panic, Frank Chickens, Gaspar Lawal, The Marine Girls, Jah Wobble And The Invaders Of The Heart, Shikisha, The Malopoets, David Cunningham And Peter Gordon, Orchestra Jazira, Ritwik Sanyal, Ekome Dance Company, Dr Masateru Ando, Lakshmi Jayan, Dartington Gamelan Orchestra, Scream and Dance, Yoshi Kazu Iwamoto, Aboriginal Artists, Budha Dhitya Makharjee, Boroughloch, Amadu Jobareth, Sadi Al Hadithi and Remo Schka.
Full article:
Peter Brooman (co-founder, WOMAD) : It was great - we had films, workshops, children's activities and a fantastic bill with Jah Wobble, Kanda Bongo Man, Misty In Roots, Test Department and Aboriginal artists. That worked very well, and the money we raised from T-shirt sales funded the WOMAD Foundation, a non-profit initiative that would promote, improve and advance multi-cultural education.
With Bob Hooton, I set up a base within a local office and we did desperate things like making a desk from a piece of old, discarded wood. We were signing on the dole and sleeping on floors but still charged on in our optimistic, penniless way. I suppose we were really determined and had a visualisation of something worthwhile, and steadily we built WOMAD from the ground up throughout the ’80s.
We proved with the ICA that if people had the budget and the space we could move this festival in pretty much anywhere, and there was tons of money abroad. Within months we were having meetings in Denmark and Canada, and started planning our first international festivals there for 1988. With our network of hugely talented artists like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Guo Brothers, Remmy Ongala, Ali Farka Toure and Flaco Jimenez making their mark, they really helped to establish WOMAD’s identity.
(Source : Total production International magazine, September 2007)
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With Bob Hooton, I set up a base within a local office and we did desperate things like making a desk from a piece of old, discarded wood. We were signing on the dole and sleeping on floors but still charged on in our optimistic, penniless way. I suppose we were really determined and had a visualisation of something worthwhile, and steadily we built WOMAD from the ground up throughout the ’80s.
We proved with the ICA that if people had the budget and the space we could move this festival in pretty much anywhere, and there was tons of money abroad. Within months we were having meetings in Denmark and Canada, and started planning our first international festivals there for 1988. With our network of hugely talented artists like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Guo Brothers, Remmy Ongala, Ali Farka Toure and Flaco Jimenez making their mark, they really helped to establish WOMAD’s identity.
(Source : Total production International magazine, September 2007)