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Wombwell Mad-Fest

Friday

It's been a while since the last Wombwell Mad-Fest, the last one being about five years ago, but it came back to us with a resounding thumbs up over the bank holiday weekend and brought with it the first flurry of good weather of the festival season. The programme for the 7th Wombwell Mad-Fest was probably its most diverse to date, taking in music from all around the world; from Canada to Sweden, Ireland to Africa and Nashville to Barnsley. A little corner of WOMAD was introduced to the small South Yorkshire town in the form of Baka Beyond on Friday night, whose rich musical textures from around the world, were received with no small measure of enthusiasm and a good deal of audience participation on the small but functional dance floor.

Although the little South Yorkshire town of Wombwell appears to be a world away from the rainforests of South-East Cameroon, Martin Cradick and Su Hart's original intention to capture the sounds and the traditional music of the Baka Pygmies and bring those sounds to a wider audience worked well here in the heart of the Dearne Valley. The multicultural tour-de-force that began as a group of predominantly British musicians, but which has now evolved to include within its ranks musicians from Brittany, Cameroon, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ghana, performed a couple of sets filled with the authentic sounds of the rainforests that could not fail to bring the festival alive with their memorable and exciting stage show. An inspired choice of acts to really get this little festival off the ground.

Earlier in the evening the festival got underway with singer songwriter activist and self confessed 'Enemy of the State' Guy Maile, opening the festival with a selection of songs from his own pen as well as throwing in a couple of well known covers such as Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" for instance, which was preceded by some prog rock guitar pyrotechnics. Guy Maile soon became a familiar face around the festival and also stuck around to run one of the two singers and musicians sessions in the neighbouring Conservative Club on Saturday afternoon.

Sandwiched in the middle of the evening between Guy Maile and Baka Beyond was Nashville songstress, Kim Richey. Originally from Zanesville, Ohio, Kim brought a taste of Nashville to Wombwell, with a set filled with superbly crafted yet accessible songs. Kicking off with "Those Words We Said", a song recorded by country star Trisha Yearwood, Kim played with the assurance of an artist steeped in American music, providing song after song of excellence and maturity. Joining Kim on stage towards the end of her set, which culminated in "A Place Called Home", which incidentally featured in an episode of the hit TV series 'Angel', was fiddler Katriona Gilmore, whose five minute backstage rehearsal proved to be all that was necessary to come up with a finale that was as polished as one would expect from months of practice.