It was a sign only glimpsed for a second or so as the bus whizzed past on its way into the capital of Taranaki: my first direct indicator of a level of boosterism that has become a definite strand in the social make-up of present-day Taranaki. Can you imagine any other town in New Zealand having the presumption to make such a claim? If the Auckland city authorities erected a big sign with the words "Auckland - Where Life Begins", it would be greeted south of the Bombay Hills with condescending smirks and disparaging comments about Auckland wankers.

So just why would "New Plymouth - Where Life Begins" still cause a grin but not be particularly surprising? The need for Taranaki's inhabitants to learn to like themselves again after having for so long been considered to inhabit a dead-end squeezed in-between a volcano and the Tasman Sea may have something to do with it.

The last time I was in New Plymouth was in 1990. It was winter and the atmosphere was wet, cold and miserable. I remember chatting to a couple of underage drinkers in the White Hart, and being told that, like so many of the city's youth, they couldn't wait to get out of the place once high school ended. Well, it's been fifteen years, and now the young locals walk around wearing tee-shirts with things like "Taradise" and "Taranaki Hardcore" emblazoned on them. Since The Last Samurai hit town and Hollywood stars began making nice comments about the place, the locals have been feeling much more confident about themselves. Real estate prices shot up as a result of Hollywood money coming to town, concurrent with a general upswing in the provincial economy over recent years, making for prosperous times, as witnessed by the radical reshaping of New Plymouth's downtown area as a result of various construction and "beautification" projects.

Another contributor to this mood upswing has been the arrival of one of the behemoths of the music festival scene: WOMAD (World of Music Arts and Dance), founded by former prog rocker Peter Gabriel in 1981 to promote what people began referring to around that time as "World Music". The first NZ edition of the festival was held in New Plymouth in 2003, with the 2005 festival promising to be even better.

Friday

Whatever else may be said about the festival, the setting was certainly spectacular. Walking along the lakeside in the lush green setting of Pukekura Park on the way to Brooklands Park just before nightfall on the opening night of WOMAD was one of the most blissful, relaxing experiences I have had for a long time. The trees blocked out any music from the festival area until you got right up to the entrance, and even then it was only a muffled presence.

The first surprise of the weekend was having an orange wristband fastened to me and being told I could not take it off until the festival was over three days later. 06999 was my number. It was a bit like being one of those home detention prisoners clamped with the tracker anklets. I would have felt less denigrated if they had taken my fingerprints. Or how about a photo ID instead guys? I would happily give you a scowling mug shot.

Having arrived in time only to catch the end of Zap Mama's performance, the Lucid 3 was the first real act I saw and provided a relaxing opener for the evening on the small Pinetum stage, in a cosy grove of pine trees. "Pinetum", now there's a good word - one source of idle amusement that weekend was hearing how many variations on the pronunciation of that word the stage announcers could come up with. In-between enjoying the Lucid 3 and their very tight set, there was plenty of opportunity for people spotting, including my first Indian Princess that evening. She was to be the first of many ethno-hippy chicks (ranging in age from 16 to 60) to be seen around the festival grounds that weekend, dressed up like they were raised on the banks of the Ganges rather than coming from the white suburbs of Aotearoa. This particular one was about 20 and was clutching a
scantily-clad baby that had already turned a shade of purply blue from the rapidly falling evening temperatures.

A need for some sort of sustenance took over after the Lucid 3, so a quick tour of the food stalls was called for. Generally, the various forms of ethnic takeaways and "gourmet' fare offered were overpriced. The stall owners had a captive market and they knew it. The consequence was prices such as $14.50 for some "haute cuisine" lettuce salad in a plastic container, or $7 for two kebabs on a small paper plate of lumpy rice. Having been caught out on Friday night (what are you gonna do - walk all the way back into town for a burger?), the following two days I had lunch in town before setting off for WOMAD, and later knocked off for a dinner break about 5pm and headed downtown for a proper restaurant meal. Why squander $30 on overpriced takeaways when you can have a real meal in one of New Plymouth's fine eateries for the same price?

It took a while for my system to recover from that evening's intake of grease, MSG and salt. Fortunately, the best act of the evening was there to take my mind off it: Fat Freddy's Drop. It was the finest performance by a kiwi reggae band I have ever seen, going back all the way to the likes of Herbs and Aotearoa. They had a huge sound that didn't burst your eardrums (well, I can't vouch for the people standing directly in front of the stage speakers), a bass player as rock-steady and regular as an all-bran diet, and a horn section that could best be described as precision audio engineering. Yes, they were THAT good.

Saturday

For me, Saturday started at the main stage with Yair Dalal & The Asmar Ensemble, purveyors of Iraqi and Jewish Arabic music. Their gentle, haunting melodies perfectly matched the mood of what was a calm tranquil day, but were perfectly at odds with the chattering of the audience. Oblivious to the need for silence, the mass of people in front of the main stage mainly seemed preoccupied with eating, gossiping, answering their cell phones, drinking or whatever - in other words, anything but the music. It is just as well that, on the other side of the moat, the performers had their monitor speakers turned up and did not seem to notice (or perhaps they were too graceful and polite to tell the audience to shut up), but from where I was sitting it was hard to concentrate on the music due to all the crowd noise.

For Les Yeux Noirs, this was definitely not a problem. Although their mix of Eastern European and Jewish klezmer music was performed mainly on acoustic instruments, there was little that was sedate about it, and they had a level of energy and amplification that could demand the attention of even the most listless sunbaked audience. This was the beginning of a pattern that was to be repeated during the rest of the festival. At WOMAD, the acts that relied on volume and sheer musical grunt fared far better than the more subtle, quieter acoustic acts. A combination of unsympathetic conditions for acoustic instruments (particularly high-volume spillage from other stages because various of the stages were so close together) and a crowd that seemed to be more interested in things other than the music combined to make things difficult for them.

I left before the end as it was too painful to watch these eminent musicians being treated like a minor attraction at a sideshow. I later heard that their performance fell apart due to sound suddenly erupting from a nearby stage and throwing them off their concentration.

Alcohol was an interesting feature of WOMAD. It was one of the festival's various paradoxes that no bottles or glass were allowed on-site, and that the stony-faced gatekeepers were searching everyone's bags, yet alcohol was actually on sale once you got inside. Consequently, you saw various people wandering around toting opened wine bottles to swig out of. Fortunately there did not seem to be any of the shit-faced drunks you get at certain sports events, but as the level of alcohol consumption continued rising over the weekend, getting trodden on and stumbled over by people not quite in control of their faculties became one of the more tedious aspects of being in the audience. Of course, it may have been due to the fact they were taking substances other than alcohol. Certainly a fair amount of grass was being smoked, judging from what I could smell as I wandered around the place.

Saturday evening had started off on a very low note down near the front of the main stage. Two solo parents on a date who had dragged along their respective three year-olds decided to squeeze into an impossibly small space just to my left and immediately behind me. Rather than enjoying an amazing performance by the legendary 60s folk singer Richie Havens, who kicked things off with a rousing version of Dylan's song "Maggie's Farm", instead all I got was intense annoyance from these two selfish modern parents and their equally selfish kids. What followed was half an hour of listening to two screaming, cranky little monsters who were up way past their bedtime, didn't want to be there, and decided to let everyone in the vicinity know it.A realisation of the disruption they were causing with their kids should perhaps have dawned on these parents, what with all the very pointed stares they were getting from various people in the immediate vicinity, but such a mild-mannered approach was to no avail. I however was not so restrained: after a couple of muttered comments and a judiciously applied elbow aimed at one of the little monsters who had decided to use me as a climbing frame, the penny suddenly dropped for the inconsiderate dating mother: "I think we should go." With them out of the way, the remainder of the performance was great. My blood pressure had just managed to drop down to a normal level when Richie finished his set with Taj Mahal singing "Freedom", followed by a quick encore and it was all over.

Sunday

Sunday began restfully with a group which sounded so unlikely that they did not seem an attractive prospect: the Jim Moray 4, whose speciality is performing old English folk songs in a contemporary English rock style (think Travis, or some similar band, and you will know what I mean). It could have been horrible. No, it could have been absolute shite. Under any other circumstances than a beautiful sunny Taranaki Sunday afternoon, relaxing stretched out in the cool shade, I may very well have hated them, but I simply couldn't bring myself to do it. Jim Moray's performance of a Richard Thompson song helped too. Listening to the Jim Moray 4, even a couple of selfish baby-boomers trying to sit on my feet couldn't sour me. What a guy! What a group! What a show!

It was a bit of an afternoon for white boys from Great Britain, as later on I found myself facing the opposite stage to watch Patrick Duff and Alex Lee, supported by a helpful drummer they had picked up in Australia and whose name I didn't catch. The duo were originally members of the Bristol group Strangelove, who were active in the 90s Britpop days until they eventually disbanded in 1998. Probably more than one member of the audience was wondering what the hell they were doing at a World Music festival, but the incongruousness of it all was curiously appealing. They sounded a bit like the mannered offspring of Mark E. Smith, with a glum indy rock sound that was so completely at odds with such a bright festive occasion that it was a joy watching them. In spite of the throwaway nature of some of the songs, they provided some of the most amusing moments of the festival. One highlight was watching them sing a very sarcastic song called "Married With Children" to an audience dominated by middle-aged couples with their kids in tow. Another choice moment involved watching the reactions of the unsuspecting parents in the audience while Patrick Duff and Alex Lee regaled them and their offspring with dark tales about junkies, needles and other unsavoury topics. Someone on WOMAD's organising committee either has a very twisted sense of humour or they had no idea of what they were getting. Either way, it was a great tonic for the cheesy mix of peace, love, lentils and hippy capitalism that was being served up that weekend.

Overall, WOMAD had its moments, and certainly for the locals it was "RAH RAH RAH TARANAKI FOR EVER!" all the way (see, for example, the glowing account of WOMAD provided by the Monday morning edition of the local newspaper), but for me the festival was disappointing in many ways. Being tagged like a crim, and the level of commercialism on-site, seemed very much at odds with the "we are all a big happy world" theme running through the event, as was the selfish behaviour of the audiences, who did not seem to be either particularly sympathetic towards the music, or even interested in it. While the sound quality and mixing of the performers was excellent, too many performers were hampered by spillage from other stages. That such problems had not been sorted out even though this was the second WOMAD held at the venue does make you wonder. The organisers had no shortage of space, what with both Pukekura Park and even a racetrack adjacent to the concert venue that could have been used but, for whatever reasons, they weren't. Will I be going back in 2007? Possibly for one night if there is a performer I really want to see, but the thought of going through three whole days of it again really doesn't grab me.

Venetic 2005
http://www.venetic.com/