Around the world

Seun Kuti's show was delayed by sound gremlins. Photo / Supplied

Friday

5pm: Somehow, my 87 Corolla splutters into New Plymouth after an eight-hour drive without a breakdown. I pitch camp in a rapidly growing tent city at the city's racecourse - I'm assigned a spot beside the toilets, so at least I'll be able to find my way back - and wander downhill to Brooklands Park, venue for Womad 2009. A three-day feast of world music, food and arts awaits.

5.45pm: Taranaki iwi open the festival, followed by the inevitable speeches. An MP drones on for what feels like several days.

6pm: "Kia ora! How you doin'?" That's Senegal's Seckou Keita - billed as the "Hendrix of the kora", with a phallic-looking African harp made from a gourd, a piece of mahogany and 21 bits of fishing line. Then, singer Binta Suso, from Gambia, launches into the band's first number and my hair stands on end. What a voice!

7pm: I hoof it up a monstrous hill to the other end of Brooklands Park - sprinting from one end of the site to the other between bands soon becomes a familiar ritual - to catch the Bedouin Jerry Can Band, a bunch of itinerant musicians and coffee grinders from Egypt's Sinai desert.

In case you're wondering about the name, their instruments include ammunition cases and jerry cans left behind by the Israeli army after the Six Day War.

The lead singer, clad in traditional Arab robes, doesn't know a lot of English - but he knows enough to shout, "Hello! How arrrre you?" after every song. He also knows enough to inform us that he is being distracted by "a girl with very attractive eyes" dancing in the front row. "Don't you mean a goat?" one wag shouts.

7.23pm: The band is upstaged by a Whangarei District councillor as she attempts to fold up a spring-loaded mat. Her 10-minute battle has the audience transfixed. When she finally scurries away, the mat still fighting to escape her grip, dozens of onlookers cheer and clap.

8pm: I rush back to the main stage to catch Sa Dingding as she weaves together traditional Chinese folk and Western electronica. She tells the audience New Zealand reminds her of her home in Inner Mongolia because there's so much grass. I assume she's referring to the stuff growing on the Taranaki hills, not the pungent clouds wafting across the park. To my ears, her singing sound like cats mating. The ducks flee, honking, into the sky.

8.34pm: I head to the global food village for a feed, and find everyone has the same idea. The queue for Hungarian langos - discs of deep-fried dough - stretches halfway across the village. I go for a Greek souvlaki instead.

9pm: Anglo-Egyptian diva Natacha Atlas is one of the few performers I've heard of, thanks to her cross-over albums with Transglobal Underground, and I'm looking forward to her show. Alas, Atlas is a disappointment, storming off stage mid-song when the sound isn't up to scratch and barely lifting her bum off her seat.

10pm: It's a tough choice, but I skip Malian rocker Rokia Traore for blind Aboriginal singer Gurrumul. He doesn't talk much - the banter is left to his band - but when he sings it's with a voice bursting with heartbreak, longing, hope, tenderness and loss. It's a voice so beautiful I'm moved almost to tears, even when the song turns out to be about the orange-footed bush fowl.

11pm: Out of curiosity I poke my nose into one of the minor stages where French-Algerian act Speed Caravan is playing. I'm astounded. The four-piece band combines keyboards, bass guitar, drums and the oud, the ancient Arab string instrument that evolved into the lute and eventually the guitar. But this is no ordinary oud. Long-haired Mehdi Haddab has hooked the usually sedate instrument up to a hefty amp and a host of effects pedals, and plays it loud, fast and with riotous joy. I feel like I'm witnessing musical history, the Arab version of Jimi Hendrix redefining the guitar.

Saturday

9.30am: I crawl out of my tent and an arts tutor from Wanganui orders me to draw on a huge roll of paper. It's for a thesis on the topic that everyone's an artist, apparently.

4pm: It's Warren Maxwell's turn in the spotlight, and the driving force behind Little Bushman doesn't disappoint. Soon a crowd is dancing in the blazing sun.

7pm: Dengue Fever serves up one of the festival's more bizarre musical cross-overs. A bunch of Californian groovers somehow stumble on Cambodian pop from the 1970s - just before Pol Pot had all the country's musician's murdered - and decide to revive the genre, throwing in a bit of West Coast psychedelia, facial hair worthy of ZZ Top, and a Cambodian beauty queen on vocals.

9pm: Sound gremlins strike again. This time it's Nigeria's Seun Kuti, son of the legendary Fela Kuti, whose show is delayed. For 10 straight minutes a sound technician chants "tseh tseh eh eh ooh ooh ah ah" into the microphones - or perhaps he's an avant garde performer.

11pm: British world music DJ Russ Jones is spinning discs. The music is an odd mix of dance beats and polka, but somehow it works. Hundreds of Taranaki teens are dressed up in headbands and coloured scarves, like a 1960s theme party.

Sunday

2pm: I try ordering a Hungarian langos again. This time the queue stretches halfway to Budapest. I have a curry instead.

4pm: The party's on as British/Cuban combo Ska Cubano takes to the main stage. There's a good 10,000 people of all ages in the Bowl, and half of them are dancing by a lake in front of the stage. "Come on in," singer Natty Bo urges, and soon a dozen groovers are gyrating in the duck pond. Surf lifeguards are poised in the wings in case it all turns pear-shaped.

9.30pm: I hoof it back up the hill for the last time to see Speed Caravan's second show. Alas, word has got out that these hairy Algerians are the discovery of Womad '09. The crowd is huge and raucous; the girls up the front have made a cardboard sign saying: "SPEED CARAVAN WE WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABIES".

If anything, the show is even better than Friday's. Haddab's playing is so intense I fear his oud will explode. When their hour's up the band is reluctant to leave; the crowd isn't happy either.

10.30pm: How can anything match that? I start staggering toward the gates, but hear the vocal acrobatics of Lo Cor de la Plana, six men from France. I look for the percussion section and realise with amazement there isn't one - nothing but voices, clapping and foot-stamping.

Global stars for Womad

An Ethiopian music legend, a star of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club, French gypsy dancehall punksters and "the voice of the Sahara" _ those are just a few of the 250 performers from 19 countries lined up for Womad 2010.

Headlining the three-day world music festival at New Plymouth's Brooklands Park will be 10-piece band Ethiopiques featuring Mahmoud Ahmed, a one-time shoeshine boy who hit stardom in 1960s Ethiopia.

Other big-band acts will be Babylon Circus, a French 10-piece embracing chanson, funk, Afrobeat and dancehall reggae; and eight brass-playing brothers from Chicago who fuse jazz, rock, reggae and hip hop, called the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.

They will be joined by Africa's Dub Colossus, singer Mariem Hassan from occupied Western Sahara and Eliades Ochoa, the guitarist from the Buena Vista Social Club.

Kiwi acts include Far North reggae band 1814, the Bellbirds with Don McGlashan, House of Shem, Ladi6, Anna Coddington and the acclaimed NZTrio, who are teaming up with a Finnish folk-fusion duo.

It promises to be a family-friendly event with a kidzone and a children's parade on the final evening, as well as a youth ticket for teens. Womad 2010 will have senior viewing platforms for the first time, with seating, shade and water for over-65s. The festival will also boast a food village, movies, a paepae area with ta moko and weaving by Taranaki iwi, and an artists in conversation stage where festival-goers can meet the musicians.

The first Womad festival was organised in England in 1980 by Peter Gabriel to expose Western audiences to music from the developing world.

* Womad 2010 runs from March 12-14 at New Plymouth's Brooklands Park and TSB Bowl. For the full line-up see womad.co.nz. Tickets available from Ticketek branches or ticketek.co.nz