Live Photos & Review: WOMAD Aotearoa 2025 Festival

One of the crucial elements WOMAD has going for it is the open-minded audience, which mixes people of all ages, often attending as a family. Their tastes may be broad, but the vibe of the festival makes for open-minded attendees that will embrace musical acts if they make an effort to reach out to them.

As a result, the standout performers this year were more aligned in their engaging attitude and energy level, rather than having anything musical in common. Ana Carla Marza might’ve seemed an odd proposition on paper — a solo cellist from Cuba playing latin-inspired numbers. Yet she stood as she played, strumming the cello and always in motion, while encouraging the audience to sing along. Once she had them on board, she sat down for a song and began bowing the instrument, proving she was also a virtuoso at the more traditional style of playing it.

Her music also sounds great on recordings, where she plays with a full band. Though in other cases, it was impressive to see acts whose music was less likely to be day-to-day listening who nonetheless put on a show. Before the festival, I'd tried to listen to Talisk — a Scottish band who played instrumentals on concertina (squeezebox), violin, and guitar over an electronic beat but it wasn't my cup of tea. But live, the beats were mostly just a thumping bass drumbeat that was triggered by the guitarist tapping on a footpad. It suddenly felt more like the type of foot-stomp you'd expect this trio to play along to and they performed with such obvious excitement that it was infectious, with the concertina-player jumping onto his chair to hype things up.

Many of the local acts also knew how to get the audience onside. Laughton Kora drew them in with jokes, even while apologising that few songs by his new act Black Comet had been released yet and they even made up one on the spot. Newcomer WHO SHOT SCOTT came as a startling surprise. His revved up hypeman DJ relied on the regular hip hop callouts (“make some noise”, “put your hands up”), but delivered them with such enthusiasm that he had the crowd champing at the bit. WHO SHOT SCOTT main man, Zaidoon Nasir, burned with energy from the moment he hit the stage and had the place jumping within a couple of songs.

The new DJ stage (Tūī) was a popular addition with teen attendees (and a few seasoned ravers), though was slightly hampered by having to stop for the main stage. Nonetheless DJs Pixie Lane and Poppa Jax showed the potential of having a specialty dance music zone.

Two of the best acts were saved for the final night when The Beths and CHAII both showed why they have a worldwide fanbase. They might be a world away from Anna Carla Maza (and each other) in their sound, but they fed their immense musical skill into blistering performances. The upbeat music of Balkan musician Goran Bregović closed out the main stage and when the electronics drop out, one got the real sense you were watching musicians with decades of experience. Goran himself had kept employed during the war in his homeland (former-Yugoslavia) by making music for films such as Underground and Time of the Gypsies, which made his ongoing ability to perform a vibrant live set all the more remarkable.

CHAII rounded out the night, having reworked her entire set for the festival, emphasising Persian elements for an ecstatic crowd that included her parents. She told me that she loved the festival, especially hearing a connection between the music of Palestinian-diaspora group 47SOUL, which reminded her of the party music in her home country of Iran which she left at eight years old:

"At a lot of Middle Eastern weddings, you'll get this mix of Persian music, Arabic music, and Kurdish music. They're all slightly different but from the same world. I was dancing with my friend Eileen who is also Middle Eastern and we were Middle Eastern dancing in the crowd. We were the only two. So it was like being at a traditional wedding, but cooler."

The festival as a whole showed the joy of seeking connection with other cultures and it felt all the more vital at a time when so much of the news is about politicians lashing out against foreignness of various kinds. It's so much more rewarding if you can hear music from a distant land and hear the stirring humanity in it.

Click on the thumbnail images below to view a gallery of photos of WOMAD Aotearoa 2025 by Gareth Shute and Mieko Edwards.