WOMAD Singapore 2007 – 10 Years of Real Music
Friday 24 to Sunday 26 August 2007
Fort Canning Park, Singapore
Gates Open at 6pm on Friday and 5.30pm on Saturday and Sunday.
“Live” performances begin at 7.00pm on Friday and Saturday;
6.00pm on Sunday.

10 Years of Real Music at WOMAD Singapore

The year 2007 brings 10 years of WOMAD and its pioneering worldwide music festival in Singapore. WOMAD Singapore takes place from the 24th to the 26th of August in the historic Fort Canning Park.

Since 1998, the WOMAD (World of Music, Arts & Dance) Singapore festival has introduced more than one hundred and sixty of the world’s great artists to the island and the festival is recognised as one of the country’s premier annual lifestyle events.

As one of the first outdoor privately-run events in Singapore, over the years, the festival survived the SARS epidemic, license lobbying and the struggle for sponsorship support. In the early years, a real effort went into spreading the word of WOMAD and its ethos. However, in classic fashion, WOMAD was in the right place at the right time and as the Singapore entertainment scene has grown from year to year, we have maintained our leading position here.

The festival has also gone beyond the gates of WOMAD to involve the Singapore community, firstly with school projects starting in 2002 with Africa Meets Asia. The first large-scale community project, WOMAD in the Heartlands, was initiated in 2003 and continued until last year.

As proud winner of the 2004 Best Event Experience at the 19th Singapore Tourism Awards, and honoured as the closing event for the nation’s 40th National Day Celebrations in 2005, WOMAD Singapore has indeed grown roots in this country.

The festival hit almost 20,000 attendees over the festival weekend last year, the highest record to date.

Singapore, with diversity in its heart, is the perfect match for the festival and its implicit ideology of tolerance and diversity. The three-day festival weekend embraces and nurtures an open spirit of musical creativity and adventure, delivering time and again a captivating experience for fans of real music.

“We have only begun to celebrate the world’s diversity in music over the last ten years. The festival is like a deep ocean. When the streams of the world come together, it becomes a boundless sea of musical possibility!” says Sarah Martin, Festival Director, WOMAD Singapore 2007.

The festival continues to be supported by its partner, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB)

This year’s WOMAD Singapore line-up is as follow:

Asian Dub Foundation (UK); Youssou N’Dour and the Super Etoile de Dakar (France); Sheila Chandra (India); Clube do Balanço (Brazil); OKI Dub Ainu Band (Japan); Shooglenifty (Scotland); Mahotella Queens (South Africa); David D’Or (Israel), Daara J (Senegal); Etran Finatawa (Niger); Bobby Friction and Nihal (UK); Ensemble Shanbehzadeh (Iran); r-H (Singapore); Muntu Valdo (Cameroon); Johnny Kalsi of the Dhol Foundation (UK).
For more information on the festival, please visit www.womadsingapore.com.

Photography by Eugene Tang/SingaporeSights. All Rights reserved.