BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards 2004
Poll Winners' Concert

Critics Award Rokia Traoré (Mali)
Americas Award Ibrahim Ferrer (Cuba)
North Africa and Middle Eastern Award Kadim Al Sahir (Iraq)
Boundary Crossing Award Think of One (Belgium)
Club Global New Award D J Dolores (Brazil)
Africa Award Daara J (Senegal)
Newcomer Award Warsaw Village Band (Poland)
Asia Pacific Award Sevara Nazarkhan (Uzbekistan)
Audience Award Kadim Al Sahir (Iraq)
Europe Award Ojos de Brujo (Spain)
Review, Interview and Article by Pat Napier

Vivid costumes, vibrant music, exotic instruments, musicians from all over the world... This was BBC Radio 3 Live on stage at Edinburgh's Usher Hall in all its exciting colour and energy, energy which can only be felt live. This was the very first World Music Awards Ceremony outside London, the Poll Winners' Concert 2004 and a lavish affair it was too.

To greet everybody, outside the Usher Hall there was a distinctly beat-up van with six enthusiastic musicians playing their hearts out to the punters. Who were they? The band was heavy on the drums and driving rhythm. But it got everybody in the mood for what was to come. Perhaps they were street theatre, so familiar to Edinburgh Fringe events.

Inside, the poet and co-host Benjamin Zephaniah, resplendent in a Royal Stewart tartan kilt, sporran and a vivid red tee shirt, was greeted with roars of affectionate approval. His co-host was Mary Ann Kennedy from BBC Glasgow, who was to play her own part later in the events. For the night, the Usher Hall's stalls were standing only and turned out to be more like a clubbing venue than the Proms. The stage sported a huge version of the Award, designed by a second year sculpture student at Edinburgh College of Art, the Croatian Anita Sulimanovic, and two large screens for the audience.

Rokia Traoré

But it was the music that was important, not the looks or the talking or the sham speeches or the letter opening. Each section winner had three sets (the concert ran in the order above) beginning with the stunning, assured Rokia Traoré who sang to her band's traditional instruments which underpinned her voice with a deep, deep, earth-shaking throbbing sound evoking African nights and shamanic deeds. From Rokia the mood changed completely to the hot Latin sounds of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club. Sadly, a bout of bronchitis kept Ibrahim Ferrer at home, banned from travelling by his doctor. So we had a film instead.

Mood change again with the arrival on stage of the heart throb Kadim Al Sahir from Iraq. After a prolonged and appreciative welcome it was Islamic music, very poignant and emotional. Classically trained, Kadim is unusual in World Music for he composes all his own songs, arranges his music for the instruments, writes and sets poetic texts to music. And he's not bad looking too! His Song for Baghdad was heart rending, achingly sad, full of pain - but also of joy. At the end of Kadim' s set Benjamin Zephaniah said "If we stopped listening to the politicans and started listening to the musicians, we'd soon have world peace." This nearly brought the house down.

Next up was the Boundary Crossing Award. Baffled, we waited for the present but not present band Think of One. It turned out to be the band from outside who processed in, wading through the audience, who gave up on trying to reach the stage and played from the floor. A jazz-leaning, World Music spin was heard by their unlikely group of guitar, trumpet, saxophone, euphonium and two drummers.

The centre point of the night was the music of the new award, Club Global in the shape of D J Dolores and the reason for staning in the stalls. Benjamin Zephaniah declared the auditorium a dance zone for the next half hour and so it was clubbing Usher Hall style to non-stop pulsating, driving music.

Now, programme building is a very special art. The Poll Winners' Concert showed something close to genius in this. To move out of the clubbing scene without too much pain, Daara J (the school of life) brought Rap music the full circle from its African roots back to the present day Africa, showing off all its journey's influences to make the distinctive sound - and sight - of Rap today.

A complete change of mood came once again with the Warsaw Village Band from Poland, who, sadly, couldn't be here in person. Another short film showed what we were missing - the more familiar folk music collected and rescued by the band from oblivion. Our own John McCusker presented the award to the one member of the band (a fidder) who could make it and, in the bygoing, revealed another facet of what World Music's all about: traditional fiddle lessons, Scottish and Polish.

Sevaa Nazarkhan © York Tillyer

The undoubted star of the whole show was Sevara Nazarkhan from remote Uzbekistan. The mountainous Uzbeki and Tadjiki countries have nurtured uniquely distinctive music, alluring, intriguing, not-quite ancient Persian and not-quite sensuous Indian. Uzbeki instruments look as though they've come straight out of Persian miniatures. Sevara's own instrument, the doutar, has two silk strings and the sounds are intimate and sensuous but not lush, clear and transparent like looking through quartz crystal. For the middle song, the 'intruder' into the instruments - the very Scottish clarsach (harp) - joined this gorgeous music. Sevara invited her friend, our co-presenter Mary Ann Kennedy, to join them to reveal yet another World Music connection. I have to tell you that the clarsach sounded just right as part of the group!

BBC Radio 3's audience chose Kadim Al Sahir for their very own award. Then the show closed with the big Europe Award won by the stunning 10 person self-managed co-operative, independent band Ojos de Brujo, who produce their own music on their own label. They had everything, Spanish dancing, Spanish music which also incorporated the very best from World Music into their own distinctive style. They played for more than half an hour and could have played longer, so inventive was their music, but time ran out. Real magic!

That's, then, what World Music is all about: the celebration of the cream of folk traditions from all over the world, playing together, exchanging musics and ideas. It's about the triumphant survival of rootedness in their soil, of the celebration of their small independent CDs against the giant conglomerates of the music industry, of the ability of such varied folk music to play to full halls of wildly enthusiastic people and, importantly, to hear it easily via BBC Radio, both Radio3 and World Radio. Edinburgh loved it and so will Gateshead next year.

.© Pat Napier. 9 March 2004

BBC Radio 3 will broadcast the Poll Winners Concert on Saturday 13th March at 3pm and BBC 4 will broadcast highlights on Friday 12th March. A compilation CD was released on Union Square Music on Monday 23rd February