Womad Aotearoa 2025: Queen Omega and Nitin Sawhney booked for festival

Ibibio Sound Machine had the crowd dancing and singing along during their performance on the TSB Bowl stage on Saturday, March 16 during Womad New Zealand 2024. Photo / Ilona Hanne

The organisers of Womad Aoteaoa 2025 have announced the first artists booked to perform at Ngāmotu New Plymouth’s Bowl of Brooklands and Brooklands Park in March next year.

Womad is a festival featuring performers in music, arts and dance from around the world and across Aotearoa and draws thousands of festival-goers to Taranaki in March each year. Womad Aoteaoa 2025 will run from March 14 to March 16 and is one of the most anticipated dates on the festival calendar.

The 2025 line-up includes Trinidadian reggae singer Queen Omega, who has spent most of 2024 touring the world with her More Love tour, which started in January in Goa. She has been travelling the globe throughout 2024, performing at major reggae festivals in Europe, the UK and the US.

Trinidadian reggae singer Queen Omega is one of the first artists to be named for Womad Aotearoa 2025.

Born Jeneile Osborne in San Fernando in Trinidad and Tobago in 1981, she began her musical career singing in calypso and soca bands, before turning to reggae after she adopted the Rastafarian faith. Her mother encouraged her to enter local talent shows from the age of 9, and she soon began singing backing vocals for a local music producer.

Queen Omega moved to the UK in 2000 to further her music career, spending several years performing at various reggae festivals around the world. In 2023 a song of hers, No Love Dubplate, became a viral hit, with more than 45 million views on YouTube.

Another UK-based artist, Nitin Sawhney, will also be performing at Womad Aotearoa 2025. The British musician, composer and producer is famous for his genre-blending artistry. He seemingly effortlessly switches from British electronic and fusion to composing orchestral pieces as well as works for globally acclaimed artists such as Paul McCartney and Sting. He was also one of five judges for the 2024 Booker Prize.

Sawhney was originally scheduled to perform at Womad New Zealand 2024, but was forced to pull out of the line-up just a couple of weeks before the festival opened, due to what was described at the time as being a medical emergency. It was later revealed he had undergone emergency surgery following a heart attack.

English/New Zealand rock band The Veils, led by Finn Andrews, will join forces with the NZTrio – Amalia Hall on violin, Asley Brown on cello and Somi Kim on piano – in what is being described by festival organisers as a powerful and stirring collaboration for Womad Aotearoa 25. It’s a collaboration that has received rave reviews in the past for performances at Tauranga’s Arts Festival and Taranaki’s own Spiegel Fest.