Maybe you’ve never heard of WOMEX. Or maybe you’ve seen it referenced opaquely in the pages of Songlines and elsewhere but always wondered what it was. Whatever the case, your listening habits, the artists you see live and even the music you get to hear about have almost certainly been affected by WOMEX’s existence. So… what is it?
WOMEX stands for the World Music Expo. It’s a meeting of delegates from the every corner of the world music sphere (and from all over the world), who get together to discuss the state of the industry, create and develop new concepts and ideas for the future and map out the next steps to be taken to ensure the continuation of this healthy and exciting musical scene – and to listen to music, of course. It’s held in a different European city every year, and this October, for their 25th anniversary, WOMEX is heading to Tampere in Finland.
The WOMEX programme is made up of many components, from conferences, mentor sessions, film screenings, network meetings, an awards ceremony and a huge trade fair. But the most visible aspect of the event comes in the evenings, when dozens of up-and-coming artists of every region and style perform at the showcase festival. Playing a showcase at WOMEX can be a career-maker: when your audience consists of hundreds of the world’s most important festival organisers, concert promoters, record labels and international media, a stand-out performance can lead to big things indeed. In recent years, WOMEX showcases have kickstarted the international careers of Jambinai, San Salvador, Blick Bassy and Maarja Nuut among many others. But a WOMEX showcase isn’t like any other show.
“The strangest things happen in showcases, one being that professionals get up and leave halfway through, or they come in for ten minutes and then walk out again. Artists are quite ruffled by that,” says WOMEX founding director Ben Mandelson. “At a regular concert, people come in and stay, so the set is built in a way to reach a climax at the end. Showcases are not like that. If somebody walks out, it doesn’t mean you’re bad; the fact that they stayed for ten minutes means that they made the effort to see you and they’ve seen what they need. You have to share them with everyone else. It’s hard for artists. But it’s much more than a gig.”
With so many potential careers at stake, the WOMEX programme is not curated like a normal festival. Instead, the performances are chosen by the ‘Seven Samurai,’ an ever-changing independent jury of WOMEX delegates who craft the line-up from the hundreds of artist proposals received every year. This process allows for a balanced approach that creates a line-up best suited for revealing new stars. It also means that the programme, by design, moves with the times. “We try and make sure that different styles and regions of the world are given access. For every club banger, we would be very interested in having intimate, small, deeply traditional performances. And everything is negotiable within that. I think it succeeds because every delegate has a different concept of what the right balance is. I would be horrified if everyone had the same idea of what the programme should be. What changes is not the balance itself, but the things on offer for which you have to make the balance.”
For an event with a tiny attendance compared to even the smallest of festivals, WOMEX and its showcase festival create ripples that are felt through the world music scene and beyond for years to come – we’re still talking about artists who appeared at the inaugural event back in 1994 (Baaba Maal and Cesaria Evora, anyone?). The world music scene will be very different in another 25 years’ time – maybe we’ll even get rid of that pesky label by then – but there is no doubt that what happens at WOMEX in the past, present and future will have a huge impact on the shape of things to come.
Photo: Santrofi live at WOMEX 19, by Eric van Nieuwland.