Womad festival review – wildly entertaining treasure trove for adventurous music fans

Charlton Park, Wiltshire
Radically inclusive global lineup includes Sampa the Great’s feminist pizzazz, Young Fathers’ twisted genre-splicing and Bixiga 70’s full-tent conga

Womad feels like an undervalued jewel in the UK’s festival scene, both as an adventurous music fan’s treasure trove and a refreshingly unself-conscious, family-friendly festival. Perhaps it’s overlooked by the hipsters because of its age (it’s 42 this year) or because its institution around the explosion of “world music” in the 1980s now seems anachronistic. The cross-generational enthusiasm of its crowd – glittered-up kids dancing alongside pensioners in the gorgeous Sunday festival parade, and across the weekend’s many gigs – suggests something more radically inclusive, more genuinely celebratory.

Friday night also has a great genre-splicing headliner: Young Fathers. Under pulsing mists and orange lights, their mix of heavy synths, twisted soul, and rap feels darkly devotional, their drums a rallying call (especially on 2014’s dread-filled party-starter Get Up, and recent singles I Saw and a throbbing Geromino, with its instruction to “breathe in like a lion, breathe out like a man”).