WOMADelaide today announced a further 40 extraordinary artists for its 30-year celebration
Including festival favourites The Cat Empire, the debut of Kiwi powerhouse L.A.B., hip-hop heavyweights A.B. Original and oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros with a 52-piece Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
The Cat Empire joined the WOMADelaide family in 2003 when they played WoZone, the festival’s late-night club. Next year’s show will be their final SA show with the original line-up, accompanied by dancers and special guests.
Winners of the 2020 Best Roots Artist at the Aotearoa Music Awards, five-piece L.A.B have become a phenomenon over the past few years, selling out 10,000 capacity stadiums in New Zealand with their weighty mix of reggae, electronic, blues, funk and rock.
The multi award winning hip-hop outfit A.B. Original will be playing their first show since 2020. The group have been in the studio writing and recording for their highly anticipated sophomore album and are pumped to be back on the WOMAD stage for the first time in many years.
Cairo-born ARIA-Award winning composer and oud master Joseph Tawadros AM will perform his grand, cinematic Concerto for Oud & Orchestra and four other works with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, with his brother James Tawadros on Arabic percussion, on the opening night of the festival.
A small but stellar international contingent will also perform at WOMADelaide 2022, including Brazilian jazz legends Azymuth & Marcos Valle; Grammy nominated Mississippi blues artist Cedric Burnside and Grammy-winning Guatemala born, US based folk singer Gaby Moreno.
Also appearing will be Scottish trad-electronic band Elephant Sessions and New Zealand’s multi award-winning Troy Kingi, currently conquering his dream to release ten albums of ten different genres in ten years and multi-instrumentalist Tio from Vanuatu.
Joining them will be world-renowned composer-producer-DJ Floating Points and Grammy nominated environmentalist and house music DJ Jayda G, alongside NZ DJ AROHA.
“Expanding our 30th anniversary line-up with the calibre of artists we are announcing today is hugely exciting,” said Ian Scobie, Director.
“The diversity of our 2022 line-up and celebrating predominantly Australian artists is exceptional, from Asteroid Ekosystem (Ed Kuepper, Lloyd Swanton & Alistair Spence), Australian hip hop royalty A.B. Original, Farhan Shah & Sufi-Oz and DJ Floating Points, exemplifies the mix of diversity and discovery our audiences have come to love and expect at WOMADelaide!”
