WOMADelaide 2024 music festival reviews: Ziggy Marley, Jose Gonzalez, Corinne Bailey Rae, Seun Kuti

The annual WOMADelaide music festival is now over. Check out our latest reviews of the top performers – and see what happened when Ziggy Marley took to the stage.

The annual WOMADelaide music festival has wrapped up for another year.

Check out our latest reviews of the four-day event’s top performers.

Ziggy Marley

Monday, 9.30pm

5 stars

Singer Ziggy Marley. Picture: Supplied

Bob Marley’s classic Get Up Stand Up made two appearances on the final evening of WOMADelaide.

The first was near the end of the performance by Cymande, a British West Indian funk band from the early 70s which reformed forty years later. Their songs are full of catchy riffs with a distinctive, unique sound; their set was hugely enjoyable. The band members – who, let’s face it, are not in the first flush of youth – obviously enjoyed it too. “Music is the message and the message is music”, they sang – food for thought there.

The second time the song appeared was – no surprise – in Ziggy Marley’s compelling set. Marley came onstage unannounced – I’ve never seen that before at WOMADelaide -no doubt to catch protesters off guard. His first song was a prayer for peace for the children of Israel and Palestine, with the refrain “Shalom, Salaam”, peace in Hebrew and Arabic. Nobody could seriously object to that sentiment.

While the protesters formed a vocal minority within the audience, they were hugely outnumbered. Marley’s message of love and unity is hard to argue with, and his sincerity is, I think, unquestionable. When he sings “Love is my religion” he means it. He extended that song with a very personal rendition, as if he were opening his heart to the audience. You would have to be deafened by ideology not to be moved by the way he sang it.

The circumstances of Ziggy Marley’s performance were unusual, to say the least – without parallel in WOMADelaide’s history. The intensity of his commitment to the ideals he inherited from his father is absolute and comes through powerfully in his performance. It was fitting that he concluded with Bob Marley’s classic “One Love”. His voice was eerily similar to his father’s as he sang “One love, one heart … let’s get together and feel alright.” As the song goes: “What about one heart?” Good question. Answer is needed urgently.

– Stephen Whittington

Morcheeba

Monday, 7.15pm

3.5 stars

Morcheeba. Picture: Supplied

WOMADelaide 2024 has been drawn into political controversy – a sign of the times, no doubt.

I went in search of something non-political. RoZeO’s performance sounded interesting. I was told it involved four people dancing on top of tall Poles. It turned out to be poles, which was less interesting.

A parade of elephants on the other hand was more interesting than it sounded, and was a highlight of the festival, if you were 4 years old. Tibetan singer Tenzin Choegyal, supported by a local string quartet, took us through the Tibetan Book of the Dead, His marvellous voice is probably best heard in a Himalayan valley and it was glorious – but I had to leave while stuck in the bardo.

Morcheeba presented a kind of symphonic rock that was impressively produced. But I tend to follow the Chinese principle that if the décor of a restaurant is too flash then the food is unlikely to be good.

So the fancy strobe lighting effects were off-putting. But Skye Edwards is an excellent vocalist and the band is very good. They were politically neutral as far as I could tell, which was a relief, especially in the tense lead-up to Ziggy Marley.

– Stephen Whittington

Seun Kuti

Foundation Stage

Saturday, 9.45pm

4 stars

Seun Kuti: Picture: Supplied

Describing Seun Kuti’s performance as high octane is contrary to the Zeitgeist.

The internal combustion engine will soon be a thing of the past and pretty soon no one will know what high octane means. Whatever metaphor takes its place will need to be capable of describing the relentless speed and energy, bordering on frenzy, of his performance.

Backed by a superb band that had to work extremely hard to keep up with him, Kuti’s set began with a tribute to his father, the immortal Fela Kuti, founder of Afrobeat, and the greatest African musical figure of modern times.

The layering of rhythmic patterns in Afrobeat produces intricate textures that are unknown in Western popular music, which is largely stuck in a monotonous rhythmic rut of four-beat doof-doof.

Seun Kuti and his multicultural band, Cairo 80, are on another planet, where the beat floats, and everyone can find their own place in it. At this point, when the atmosphere was warm and fuzzy, a sweat-covered Kuti told the audience they were “the best people in Australia”. Shortly after that things started to go wrong.

Technical issues created problems and the band had to vamp while they were sorted out. Seun Kuti was visibly frustrated by this. The situation deteriorated owing to political actions by some members of the audience which angered Kuti further and led to a long, passionate statement in which the phrase “come late to the party” recurred.

There followed an unexpected addition to the program, Fela Kuti’s Zombie, a song with deep and tragic resonance for the Kuti family, which was delivered as a rebuke. It was a political situation which, as far as I can recall, in the past thirty years has no precedent in WOMADelaide’s history.

It’s hard to say how sections of the audience took this, or even whether they understood the implications of Kuti’s actions. It was a passionate demonstration of Kuti’s political commitment which is deeply embedded in his art, and must be respected whether you agree with him or not.

– Stephen Whittington

José González

Stage 2

Saturday, 6.30pm

4 stars

Jose Gonzalez.

Jose Gonzalez, Swedish out of Argentina, tends to have a completely alluring single figure, or motif, on guitar to each song.

It sounds so simple, and is so easy to become acquainted to it, while his vocals sail across the top, seemingly in a completely different direction.

It makes for short, exquisite essays in music that recall JJ Cale.

Little wonder he attracted a huge and adoring crowd on Saturday.

The nylon-string guitar style with full, mellow intonations, and consistently full bass, can easily visit dramatic moments, lazy afternoons or romance.

Meanwhile Gonzalez sings to himself, or to his microphone, sometimes in that lazy, slurred style of a dreamy doodle, and sometimes strident.

He whistles a tune, captures a moment, or delivers stridently anti-corruption protest songs in a sweet, misleading style.

– Tim Lloyd

Corinne Bailey Rae

Foundation Stage

Friday, 10pm

4 stars

Corinne Bailey Rae. Picture:. Jane Dempster/The Australian.

All the old familiar places of WOMADelaide have undergone significant changes this year.

After watching four Korean artists trying not to drown themselves in the name of art, getting to the Foundation Stage to hear Corinne Bailey Rae was more difficult than expected. A fence barred the familiar way and the choice was between a circuitous route down the flash new shopping street or a more direct, malodorous path past the toilets, which I chose.

Following the Koreans’ example and holding my breath for two minutes I made it, purple-faced, and was rewarded with a dynamic and surprisingly varied program by this twice Emmy award-winning singer and her excellent band.

Her former reputation for smooth, soulful hits has given way to many different influences and a harder core of both sound and emotion. Rap, punk, retro soul and much more are mashed together in unexpected ways. I caught whiffs of Jimi Hendrix and Sun Ra’s Afrofuturism.

Emotions range from love and empathy to pain, indignation and anger, largely inspired by her deepening understanding and engagement with the Afro-American experience. It’s a remarkable transformation for this artist.

Yet for all the new toughness in her music, Bailey Rae remains a benign presence onstage, with all the darkness leavened by her deep-rooted optimism.

– Stephen Whittington

Grammy award-winning British singer, songwriter and guitarist, Corinne Bailey Rae. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian