WOMAD NZ 2023 - Artists announced!

WOMAD NZ announces 22 more incredible and diverse international & local talent for the 20th anniversary of the festival. 

Including Sampa The Great, Deva Mahal, Fly My Pretties, Mdou Moctar, Youssou N’Dour & Le Super Étoile de Dakar, and many more. 

WOMAD NZ 2023, March 17-19 Celebrating 20 years, 17 Festivals And Over 1500 Performers 

From; Afghanistan to Zambia, psychedelic rock to incredible vocalists, classical to hip hop, Grammy award-winning to up-and-coming, traditional to contemporary, memoirs to mathematics. 

Today, WOMAD NZ 2023 has announced 20 new music and dance acts and two World Of Words and OMV STEAM Lab speakers as part of the 2023 festival this March. The festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary at the award-winning Bowl of Brooklands and Brooklands Park in New Plymouth. 

Set to celebrate, inspire and entertain, the 22 new artists performing WOMAD 2023 in alphabetical order are: Acapollinations (Aotearoa) * Bab L’ Bluz (Morocco/France) * Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn (USA) * Cimafunk (Cuba) * Constantinople (Canada) * Deva Mahal (Aotearoa) * Fly My Pretties (Aotearoa) * Professor Hinke Osinga (Aotearoa) * Justin Adams & Mauro Durante (UK/Italy) * Kefaya and Elaha Soroor (Afghanistan/UK) * Kita (Aotearoa) * Lil O'Brien (Aotearoa) * MazbouQ (Aotearoa) * Mdou Moctar (Niger) * Mudra Dance Company (Aotearoa) * Pandit Ronu Majumdar & Dr Jayanthi Kumaresh (India) * Rizwan Muazzam Qawwals (Pakistan) * Rubi Du ( Aotearoa) * Sampa The Great (Zambia) * The Garifuna Collective (Belize) * The Langan Band (Scotland) * Youssou N’Dour & Le Super Étoile de Dakar (Senegal) 

These 22 new musicians, dancers and speakers join the already announced brilliant multi-award-winning Korean folk-pop group ADG7, Aotearoa's genre-pushing jazz, hip hop project Avantdale Bowling Club, and modern Occitan troubadours San Salvador from France. Plus, World Of Words speaker Dick Frizzell and OMV STEAM Lab meteorologist Lisa Murray, both from Aotearoa. 

More artists and festival announcements are expected in the coming months. The World of Music, Arts and Dance festival boasts eight stages, each featuring an eclectic and cross-cultural line-up with talented musicians, artists, and inspiring speakers for three days and nights of extraordinary music and culture like nothing else in Aotearoa. Situated in a natural amphitheatre over a lake, the iconic Bowl stage is a venue with the wow factor. While the Dell Stage is an intimate affair surrounded by gentle native bush. 

Both The Gables and the Brooklands stages are known for their high energy and late-night sets. The Kunming Garden hosts the World Of Word stage, which celebrates diverse and exciting voices designed to inspire people to think, talk, laugh, listen and learn and the OMV STEAM Lab is a place of wonder where Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics unite, with inventors, innovators and people at the top of their fields pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. 

Unique to Aotearoa, Te Paepae proudly hosts Māori Culture workshops and activities, and music, food, and conversation are at the heart of Taste the World. Loved by all ages, WOMAD NZ 2023 is a worldly fix without leaving the country—the ultimate culmination of sounds, scenery and good vibes. 

Chief Operating Officer for WOMAD UK, Mike Large, states, "WOMAD, first and foremost, is a great festival to enjoy and discover music, arts and dance. But it was born with a purpose and created in response to difficult times. There was apartheid aboard, race riots and terrorism at home in the UK. Our founder Peter Gabrel believed that by bringing great artists together in a family-friendly environment, the audience would forget their fears and prejudices and open their hearts to the music instead... WOMAD and what it stands for feels more important now than ever." 

Tickets to the three-day camping festival are on sale now from www.womad.co.nz .

This year, WOMAD has teamed up with PayPlan making it easy for festival-goers to book tickets now, pay in regular, easy payments, and be dancing under the mighty Taranaki Mounga in March 2023. 

Camping and glamping options are available.