World makes its way to Taranaki

By GRAHAM REID

The are hardly household names - except perhaps in their own countries - but the artists in this year's Womad to be held in Taranaki over three days in early March promise to be some of the most interesting and exciting acts to come to these shores in many years.

While rock and classical concerts have a predictability about them - you wouldn't want Springsteen not to sing his hits, right? - the Womad (World of Music, Arts and Dance) festivals have always sprung surprises.

And this time, because it doesn't have the benefit of "big names" from the world music scene (aside from Senegal's Cheikh Lo, but even being generous he's hardly hogged headlines) Womad promises to surprise even more.

Among the names worth learning to spell before you drive to New Plymouth are the following: Rachid Taha, the Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali Group and Cheikh Lo.

Let's start with Lo, an exceptional singer/songwriter and percussionist who joins the dots between mesmerising West African juju guitar and Cuban percussion. His last album Bambay Gueej was accorded four stars in a Herald review in late '99, the album before that, Ne La Thiass, was equally praised. Be prepared for equal measures of African, Cuban, funk and reggae from this dreadlocked Muslim whose voice, according to countryman Youssou N'Dour, is "a trip through Mali, Niger and Burkino Fasso".

Another who will take his audience on a passport-stamping trip is Rachid Taha, who is a distillation of late-20th-century musical influences, a one-man melting pot from Algeria whose family moved to France when he was 10. As a teenager he DJed in a Lyon club where he mixed up the hip-hop, rap and global dance music he was hearing alongside Arabic music and the rebel "rai" pop of Algeria.

He became politicised through the Clash and black-British reggae poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, joined a Parisian rock band and met famed LA producer Don Was (Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones) so briefly went to live in the States. Disappointed by the reception his Arabic pop received - good reviews but few sales during the Gulf War - he moved back to Paris, linked up with electro-hippie guitarist Steve Hillage (formerly of British prog-rockers Gong) and dug deep into Algerian rock and pop to create a unique sound.

With samples and programmed percussion his music found its audience in clubs from Egypt to Antwerp, and he performed in Paris alongside the established expat king of rai, Khaled. Santana covered his Migra on his Grammy-grabbing Supernatural album.

Taha's most recent album Made in Medina - recorded in New Orleans, Paris, London and Morocco - is a swirling and exciting confluence of his numerous influences: there are flashes of Hillage's gritty techno-rock guitar, thumping dance beats and exotic Middle Eastern melodies beneath Taha's urgent vocals on Barra Barra; Led Zeppelin fans and those who have heard rai will be equally entranced by Foqt Foqt which also has one foot in rap; and in other places blues, techno, Spanish guitar, pure pop balladry and synthesisers jostle in a thrilling, bubbling mix.

Rachid Taha will be one to see at Womad, no doubt about it.

As will the qawwali singers from Pakistan, the Rizwan-Muazzam Group. Singing the devotional music of the Sufis of Pakistan and India - popularised by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - this young ensemble had the best of teachers: they are nephews of the great man. Performers of qawwali believe their music has a transcendent quality, it is sung for devotional purpose and evokes the name of Allah to transport audiences to a place of religious engagement. This can properly be called soul music.

* Womad Festival at Brooklands Park and TSB Bowl, New Plymouth, March 14-16; Cuban maestro Cachaito Lopez has withdrawn from the lineup.