The first three names for WOMADelaide 2027 are out, and they suggest the festival knows exactly what its long-standing audience wants. Madness, Leon Bridges and Tinariwen will all play Botanic Park/Tainmuntilla from 5 to 8 March, as WOMADelaide marks 35 years on the same patch of grass.
It’s a deliberately broad opening hand: British ska, American soul and Malian desert blues. The full programme is still to come.
Madness, finally
Four decades on from Camden, Madness arrive with 10 UK top-ten albums and 15 top-ten singles behind them. Our House, Baggy Trousers and House of Fun will do what they always do to a crowd, which is to say that a good portion of Botanic Park will be singing every word without needing to think about it.
They remain one of the few bands whose live show is as much a shared event as a performance, and they have never been to WOMADelaide before.
Leon Bridges and the Happiness Anytime tour
Leon Bridges brings the Happiness Anytime tour, named for his forthcoming fifth album, and he is not travelling light: a DJ, a horn section and backing vocalists are part of the touring set-up.
The new record moves away from the Sam Cooke-adjacent soul that made his name, pulling in Jamaican dancehall, funk and Afrobeat. The Grammy is already on the shelf. This looks like the loosest, warmest version of him yet, which is exactly the right fit for a Saturday evening in the park.
Tinariwen, back after 23 years
The most significant booking is Tinariwen, who last played WOMADelaide in 2004. Anyone who was in Botanic Park that year will remember it.
The Malian group have been playing together since 1979, and their music, electric guitar lines wound around traditional Tuareg rhythms with lyrics drawn from displacement, desert and exile, has since influenced a generation of Western guitarists who have never come close to matching it. A Grammy followed. Twenty-three years is a long wait, and this is the booking to plan the weekend around.
Dates and tickets
WOMADelaide 2027 runs from Friday 5 to Monday 8 March at Botanic Park/Tainmuntilla, over the March long weekend. First-release tickets are on sale now, with one, two, three and four-day passes available and payment plans offered. Further artists will be announced in the lead-up.
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