The first day of Woodford proper began, as is only proper, by being scorched out of the tent early in the morning. My goodness, it was hot. But this time I did take a picture of Tent City:
That picture was taken at 7:30 in the morning, which means it had been too hot to be alive in the tent even earlier than that. See the shade that's covering some of the tents? Yeah, we didn't have that. It was HOT.
Just inside the festival gate there was a wall painted beautifully with mazes and logic puzzles and things. I took some pictures, meaning to come back and have a proper look later, but somehow I never did.
There was a Poets' Breakfast, where the only vegetarian breakfast food had non-optional eggs (which drjon heroically saved me from having to eat) and the poets were fairly tedious. There was one fellow who did what was basically a stand-up comedy routine, which I enjoyed lots, but as for the rest ... well, I'm glad I discovered on the first day that I didn't need to bother going to the Poets' Breakfasts for the rest of the festival.
Next, I trotted off to the Folklorica stage for the dubiousy-named "Invocation Rituals" set. It was actually really good, despite my misgivings: Tenzin Choegyal chanted and sang and played a flute, as well as attempting some fairly ambitious audience participation, which was lovely, and then Sam Okoth (accompanied by a percussionist whose name I've forgotten who was from England, "just a little north of Africa") came on in his fetching getup:
and put on an excellent performance. I really enjoyed his music, although I wasn't sure if they were all traditional Kenyan songs, just generically "African",1 or original compositions. He also made some interesting observations, both insightful ("going home" to get some of what you need doesn't have to be about a physical place) and funny (in Kenya, rich people dance slowly because they have no need to move fast - so the sluggish Woodford audience must be made up of very rich people).
There was a third item in the Invocation Rituals set, but I left early to catch Miguel performing at a different stage.
A very competent eight-piece jazz band, Miguel were ill-served by the early hour and the venue. I think they would be much better suited to a back-alley club after dark than an overgrown circus tent in the glare of the morning. The sound engineering at the Grande stage was disappointing,2 and the band played everything very, very straight, but a few people still got up and danced. I preferred their latin-style songs to the cooler, laid-back jazz, but that may just have been because I was mentally gearing up for a week of festival and wanted something high-energy to feed on. Fortunately, some of that was coming up next.
Waiting For Guinness were fun like a barrel of monkeys. Another one of those bands that people attempt to describe by sticking together different genres, their website suggests "garage cabaret", "gypsy punk", and "gangster jazz" as possibilities. Less feral than the Barons of Tang and orders of magnitude more entertaining than Miguel, Waiting for Guinness made a lot of noise and got people dancing in the gravel and dust, including little kids and people without shoes on (ouch). They also attracted the festivalgoer whom I dubbed Dancing Guy, because I saw him again and again and he was always dancing.
Next up was one of my festival favourites - perhaps even my absolute favourite - in David Hyams and the Miles To Go Band, at the endearingly-named Duck and Shovel venue. Seven band members on stage (one of whom was playing with the band for the very first time), including a cellist, a fiddler and a guy with a whistle (yay!) played a lovely acoustic, celtic-influenced yet very Australian sort of folk music. No pictures, because the ones I took are too dark and grainy even by my low Woodford standards. After seeing this band, though, I immediately re-examined my festival schedule to see how many more times I could see them. (One and a half - hooray!)
After David Hyams, Twisted Oak took to the stage, but I fled the venue after hearing their soundcheck. Not that they weren't musically accomplished, but a bunch of antipodean teenagers playing traditional bluegrass, one of them with a banjo, was really not something I wanted to listen to. While I found much to appreciate in unfamiliar musical genres at Woodford, much of the charm lay in the perceived authenticity of the performers, and Twisted Oak had none of that for me. I wandered over to the Chai tent, where Mr Percival was playing, but despite a certain similarity to Mal Webb (whose performances I already enjoy) and what seemed to be an engaging performance, I was completely exhausted3 and trudged off to become unconscious in the tent.
Said unconsciousness lasted much longer than I had planned. I didn't have to decide whether the Opening Ceremony would be too cheesy to go to, because I was asleep. I also missed Evenish, Mic Conway's National Junk Band, and That 1 Guy. I did eventually wake up and make my way back to the festival, sat through technical difficulties and some indifferent short films (QPIX's Best of the Best, apparently), then went and crashed for the night. Spoiler warning: Fortunately, this was pretty much the only time I was too tired to see and enjoy things all week.
- I am significantly uncomfortable with the lumping of just about all African culture into one basket by and for stupid whiteys; I suppose a similar thing happens with most other cultures that didn't start out European, as well. Blech. [↩]
- A trend that would continue throughout the festival and really spoil the experience of seeing some of the bands. [↩]
- Leftovers from Christmas Day, I think. Being at the festival was generally energising rather than exhausting. [↩]
