Christopher's Journal

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Still buzzing from experiences at WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance). There were four things that I asked the universe for help with at this massive festival. But my 2007 experiences were born in late July, 2006, in Reading, England.

Each year there is an open mic competition at WOMAD UK. The winners are chosen by the audience, who vote with their voices. The prize is to be invited to play at WOMAD UK the following summer. At Reading in 2006, the competition was held in the spirit of ancient Rome, in the style of a gladiator contest. There were 18 individual or group performers, and we were given one hour to complete the ritual.

I was chosen by lottery to play second of the 18. The first guy was booed off the stage after about 2 minutes. I was a bit nervous, as most of my playing has been on the street, and the stage is so different. But I was in good playing condition, and eager to share what I do with the 200 or so people there to check us out.

I played "Song of Geneva", like I do several times a day. The crowd began clapping along when the djembe came in. I was finished after about 3 minutes. The response was completely positive, and I left the stage feeling happy.

After an hour the audience had chosen 3, and I was one of them. This is how I came to be invited to play at WOMAD 2007. Click here to check out WOMAD video clips.

So for WOMAD 2007, I had four goals. The first was to give a solid performance. The second was to receive a positive audience response, and hopefully, to experience an audience that grew in number while I was playing. The third goal was to meet a music agent. And the fourth goal came about from meeting an Italian film director back in 2005.

I met Alessandro while busking in Oxford in 2005. He listened to me play for a while, and then in between songs he introduced himself. At one point he suggested that I give some of my music CDs to Peter Gabriel, the incredible musician and founder of WOMAD. I told him that I had no idea how to contact Peter Gabriel, so really I didn't see how this was possible. He implored me to try, so I told him I would check it out. I saw Alessandro a couple of more times that summer, and each time he asked if I had presented my music to Peter Gabriel. I told him that it wasn't my style to track somebody down, but he insisted again that I somehow must share my music with him. Alessandro left Oxford after a few weeks, but later I received an email message asking if I had accomplished this task. But that summer I was very focused on the street, so I didn't do anything about contacting Mr. Gabriel.