We all need Womad now

It is a feeling that anyone who's ever been to a Womad festival will recognise, in a celebration of music and musicians from all over the world. With the growth in popularity of world music, Womad has developed from a financially precarious, slightly hippy operation to a successful festival that has sold out nine years in a row and and attracts 30,000 people to its riverside site in Reading.

This year there were over 70 artists from 37 countries - Argentina to Zimbabwe, Israel to Iraq. In contrast to London in recent days the atmosphere couldn't have been more easygoing and, unlike a certain Italian football team, nobody had any reservations about coming.

Headlining on Saturday evening was Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour, the only African artist to be included in Bob Geldof 's Live8 concert in Hyde Park. "Africa is always represented by poverty, Aids and warfare," said N'Dour to the massed crowds in Reading. "But music can give Africa a positive image."

That's why it was shameful that, apart from N'Dour, no African artists were performing alongside their Western counterparts at Live8. We can only imagine how the Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, who played Womad yesterday afternoon, would have blown away the crowd at Hyde Park.

They are hot property since their recent album with Manu Chao and are Africa's funkiest band. The artist that created the biggest buzz was veteran Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed. A big star in Addis Ababa in the early Seventies, he's a fine example of how musicians outshine and outlast most politicians in Africa.

Popular Ethiopian music was virtually stopped for 18 years by Mengistu's Marxist dictatorship, only returning in the early Nineties. But Ahmed, the Ethiopian James Brown, is still in fine form and worked up some soulful dance grooves.

Winding things down last night was Pakistani group Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali. Their performance, as the light was fading, was transcendental - the voices floating over a backing of tablas and harmoniums. Qawwali music is like an Islamic form of Gospel, used by Pakistani Sufis to spread a message of tolerance.

It's just the antidote to the radical mullahs and madrassas that dominate the news. Now, more than ever, the world needs Womad.

Womad