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A S WOMAD grows to be an intrinsic part of South Australia's cultural fabric, so it also grows in strength, stature and beauty. Indeed, condensing the grand WOMAD concept - an all encompassing, three-day international music festival held every two years in Adelaide's Botanic Park - into a 12-hour concert as an Adelaide Festival cameo event has only served to magnify the unique personality of a WOMAD performance. While WOMAD has a reputation for bringing the exotic fruits of the world's native music to our ears, so too has it heightened the overt Australian-ness of our own emerging, parochial music. The Australian influence on the WOMAD brand of music has been too easily overlooked. Just as the feisty European flourish of the Yuri Yunakov Ensemble playing a bristling set of Bulgarian wedding party music , or the sublime, plucky beauty of Gambia's highly-skilled kora-playing trio of Pa Joh Jobarteh have been appreciatively embraced, digested and applauded by WOMAD audiences, so too have the selection of featured Australian acts on the concert bill become an important part of the larger Womad tapestry. In fact, the programming of the WOMAD in the Vales event was near-perfect. Starting with the loose and merry Barkers, with their flinty moments of maudlin and mirth, there was an immediate local connection; an urban Australian twist on acoustic folk music.

Such sounds sat easily with the languid crowd - a casual mob which swelled to almost 5000, reclining in deckchairs in the sun, drinking in the music (and the local wines on offer, smartly matched with enticing plates of local produce from a village of tent vendors). The easy marriage of music, wine and food made perfect sense - the signature which made WOMAD in the Vales stand apart as a unique event in its own right and worthy of distinctive praise. Importantly, the WOMAD audience was receptive to new sounds - as is their wont, even though the evenings much-anticipated highlights in Geoffrey Oryema and Scotland's Shooglenifty were both return visitors to Adelaide's WOMAD events.

The high spirit of Yuri Yunakov's hybrid-blend of ancient and modern Bulgarian festive music proved to be inspiring and uplifting - not as charged as his midnight performances at the Festival Plaza's Squeezbox venue last week but evocative and charming nonetheless.
More charming still were the intricate melodies of Pa Bobo Jobarteh and his family, furiously plucking the strings of their three koras with frightening complexity, yet producing a sweet sound which danced so softly and daintily on the ears. Their joyous native tunes of Gambia rang with the magnificence of a massed ensemble, yet shimmered with innocence and intimacy.
Still, it was the raw Australian sentiment running through Tiddas and My Friend the Chocolate Cake which seemed to strike an even deeper chord. Tiddas. a trio of engaging female troubadors who sing smart songs with an earthy poignancy, bring a solid political and social weight to their breathy harmonies and tuneful strumming.

My Friend The Chocolate Cake presents an even more delicious Antipodean treat. Formed from the melodic genius of songsmith David Bridie with cellist Helen Mountford. the Chocolate Cake evokes a rhapsody of piano-driven contemporary songs which tell telling tales of the Australian condition - smart, poignant and stirring anthems which reflect aspects of our own urban lives, loves and hopes. And outside of this lay an even equally enticing array of treats to savor. Circus Ethiopia delivered its intoxicating brand of rhythmic acrobatics and drum-driven music which had drawn full houses to its two-week season at Her Majesty`s Theatre - a fitting encore performance, indeed. Perhaps the greatest surprise lay in the artistry of Yulduz Usmanova. Unassuming as the small singer from Central Asia's Uzbekistan may have seemed, she delivered a body of songs infused with such a force of passion and overwhelming emotion that the crowd became swept up in the eddies of her muse. The pulsing rhythm of her robust band and the sensuous gyrating of the singer proved to be a spark which ignited the crowd for a long night of frivolity ahead. No reasonable person could have asked for more

David Sly