Today is the last day to secure first-release pricing for WOMADelaide 2025. As always, this year’s line-up promises an exciting array of experiences. This time, among them, ceremonial electro-voodoo rhythms that pulse with primal energy, the hypnotic soundscapes of desert blues, and the raw power of a fusion of ancient traditions with modern artistry. Encounter the wonder of a giant mechanical puppet roaming the grounds, lose yourself in reimagined pop classics sung in ancient tongues, and be swept away by the transcendent storytelling of performers who weave music and memory into something unforgettable.
Read on to discover the artists from France and the Francophonie coming to WOMADelaide 2025.
Cie Paris Bénarès – Chamôh (France)
Every day
French puppeteers Compagnie Paris Bénarès bring Chamôh, their giant hand-crafted mechanical camel puppet, out into the world. A long way from home, he brings the essence of another land, with all the hints of exotic scenes, perfumes, tastes and adventures. Chamôh with his memories and longing for the place he has left, searches for the way home as he interacts with and delights the audience.
Founded in 2008 by Patrice Verquère, Compagnie Paris Bénarès performs with their giant puppets throughout Europe and is driven by the dream of one day creating a mechanical circus.
Delgres (France)
Sat & Sun
French power trio Delgres reinvents the blues into a sound that hits between hypnotised rock, earthy soul and caustic garage. Named after a hero in the fight against slavery in the French Caribbean, where singer songwriter Pascal Danaë’s ancestors were once enslaved, their music is a vibrant vehicle for expressions of Danaë’s personal adventures, inner journey and family history. Building on his Caribbean touch, is the powerful beat of Baptiste Brondy’s drums and Rafgee’s reptilian bass lines on the tuba.
A singer, songwriter, composer and musician, Danaë has worked with Peter Gabriel, Youssou N’Dour, Laurent Voulzy, Neneh Cherry, Ayo, Gilberto Gil and more, but feels that everything in his life so far has led to this moment and to Delgres.
Elisapie (Canada)
Sunday & Monday
Inuk artist Elisapie is an acclaimed musician, broadcaster, filmmaker, activist and actor. Her resonant voice is powered by an unconditional attachment to her home, a village in Nunavik, in the northernmost region of Quebec. This remote territory and its ancient language (Inuktitut), which embodies the harshness and wild beauty of the environment, are at the core of Elisapie’s rich creative journey.
Her 2023 album Inuktitut features ten Inuktitut-language covers of classic pop and rock songs, including a haunting take on Blondie’s Heart of Glass. This album won her the award for Contemporary Indigenous Artist of the Year at the 2024 Juno Awards. Always surrounded by the best musicians from the Montreal indie and folk scenes, Elisapie makes her culture resonate with finesse by mixing modernity and tradition and is so revered as a cultural leader that Canada Post recently dedicated a stamp to her.
Etran de l’Aïr (Niger)
Sun & Mon
The desert sound of Etran de L’Aïr, a family band made up of brothers and cousins, is rooted in celebration. Their style of guitar playing is an integral part of the social fabric of the Tuareg people, and is played at weddings, baptisms and political rallies. These Tuareg guitarists from Agadez (the gateway to the Sahara Desert) play in a pan-African style that is emblematic of their hometown, citing a myriad of cultural influences, from Northern Malian blues and Hausa bar bands to Congolese Soukous. Their music invokes the exuberance of an Agadez wedding, with an overwhelming abundance of guitar solos that playfully pass over one another with restrained precision – forceful, yet never indulgent.
The band formed in 1995 when current band leader Moussa ‘Abindi’ Ibra was only nine years old, with only one acoustic guitar, using calabash fruit and a sandal for percussion. Twenty-five years later, they are stars of the Agadez guitar scene and beloved for their dynamic repertoire of hypnotic melodies.
Hewa Rwanda – Letter to the absent (Rwanda / Senegal)
Sat, Sun & Mon
Thirty years after the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi (also known as the ‘Rwandan genocide’), Dorcy Rugamba — actor, author, director and a major figure of the Rwandan cultural scene — brings to life an extract from his work Hewa Rwanda – Letter to the absent (you can see the full show at Adelaide Festival), a profoundly moving tale of his family, culture and spirituality. In tandem with Senegalese multi-instrumentalist and singer Majnun, Rugamba presents a musical reading from his memoir, an ode to immeasurable loss and love. “How can one grasp the full dimension of an event that wiped out more than a million people?” he asks.
He remains as close as possible to those who are absent, honours their memory and lives, and explores the world of before in search of its beauty and poetry. Rugamba creates a moving account, transporting the audience with his writing and a voice of rare intensity.
ilotopie – Les Gens de Couleur (France)
Every day
Performers painted in a second skin of bright colour move like living sculptures, one colour per person: blue turquoise, bright red, apple green, lemon yellow, fuchsia pink… and a different life circulates, brilliant and fluid.
Formed in the Camargue region in southern France in 1980, ilotopie are pioneers of street theatre, masters of invention and intervention with their theatrical works performed all over the world, transforming everyday places into surrealist representations of vivid imagination.
When ilotopie first appeared in Australia at the 1992 Adelaide Festival with this work, controversy around the performance influenced shifts in local regulations and sparked discussion on how performance art interacts with public spaces.
Lindigo (Réunion)
Fri & Sat
“When you know where you come from, you know where you’re going”, says Olivier Arasta, the charismatic leader of Lindigo. For more than 20 years this band has celebrated and re-invented Maloya trance music, Réunion Island’s vibrant symbol of Creole culture, with its strident vocal calls, chanted responses and complex percussion rhythms. The group’s high-octane performances explore the mixed Malagasy, African and Indian roots in Reunion, with instruments like the Madagascan kabosy and the West African kamelengoni and balafon, as well as influences from travels in Morocco and Brazil. Lindigo’s mission is to celebrate a Maloya that is free and forward-looking, building on its proud heritage.
They have performed across the continents, including at festivals such as Fuji Rock (Japan), New Orleans Jazz Festival (US), WOMAD (UK) and Paléö (Switzerland).
Majnun (Senegal)
Sat
His name means ‘the madman’ in Arabic, a name he chose because madness is his space of freedom, where he can find his music. Majnun grew up in Senegal surrounded by music, theatre and literature and comes to WOMADelaide with Hewa Rwanda: letter to the absent (that we spoke about above). Musically, his first steps were in hip-hop then reggae, but the guitar was the real starting point for him to become a multi-instrumentalist. Today, Afro-beat, jazz, funk, trance and even Latin music make up his musical fresco, an eclectic mix consistent with his nomadic roots.
With a wealth of stage experience, Majnun released his first album in 2015. After 19 years in France, in 2019 he toured West Africa, and thus came a return to his roots that culminated in recording his live album Mandingo’s Fight with Senegalese label Woti.
The Mandé Spirit (Australia)
Sun
A newly formed ensemble of Melbourne-based griots – West African storytellers, singers, musicians and oral historians – The Mandé Spirit members are from Mali, Gambia and Guinea. The group pays homage to the late, legendary kora maestro Toumani Diabaté, through intricate kora melodies and evocative storytelling. While celebrating the timeless artistry of Diabaté, the group offers a vibrant new interpretation for contemporary audiences.
This exciting new ensemble features Amadou Suso, a celebrated kora player from The Gambia; master percussionist Mohamed Camara from Guinea; Aboubacar Djelike Kouyate, a multi-instrumentalist from Mali, specialising in the calabash and kamale ngoni; and virtuoso drummer and balafonist, Bassidi Koné. Added to this is the powerful, soulful voice of Aminata Doumbia (with roots in Mali), which brings an emotive depth to the music and ensures the group captures the essence of the Mandé peoples, language and tradition.
Nana Benz du Togo (Togo)
Sat & Mon
Mesmerising and exceedingly cool, this quintet from Togo brings a completely organic sound with electronic rhythms expressed through handmade percussion, drums, a Korg synth and three powerful female voices. Firmly anchored in the group’s voodoo heritage, their songs extol the value of freedom and the importance of respect for the planet and its inhabitants. “We’ve always been ecologists, without knowing it, because Voodoo is in fact Nature,” explains Izeale, one of the three vocalists.
Nana Benz du Togo never really intended to put voodoo culture under the spotlight, yet they set alight the Transmusicales de Rennes festival in 2022 with a juggernaut of ceremonial electro-voodoo-soul and released their first album Ago in 2023. It’s music that grabs you deep inside and makes you want to dance.
Trio Da Kali (Mali)
Mon
Descending from a long line of distinguished griots (specialist hereditary musicians) in the Mandé culture of southern Mali, these distinguished artists perform one of Africa’s most subtle and sublime music styles. Trio Da Kali brings a fresh creative twist to ancient sounds, combining voice, bass ngoni, and balafon. Their music revolves around the pure vibrato voice of Hawa Kasse Mady, with songs that range from lively pieces to encourage farmers in the field, to soulful melodies and works that evoke powerful historical narratives of pre-colonial times.
Virtuoso Lassana Diabate plays the balafon, which dates back to the thirteenth century, while Mamadou Kouyate plays astonishingly creative bass lines on the four-string ngoni. Much of their repertoire has been forgotten or neglected, yet it represents a musical culture that has survived over many centuries.
They have toured, and recorded an award-winning album, with Kronos Quartet.
Yoann Bourgeois Art Company – The unreachable suspension point (France)
Every day
Trained as a dancer, circus artist animateur Yoann Bourgeois breaks down the barriers between the fields of dance, theatre, music, visual installation and audio-visual art. He has worked on film projects and with artists such as Coldplay, Harry Styles, FKA twigs and Pink, as well as projects with the Nederlands Dans Theater and the Göteborg Opera.
In 2022, he was nominated in the Best Choreographer category at the MTV music awards for the video clip for As it Was by Harry Styles. In this work the company grapples with explorations of playfulness in art and weightlessness, while spiralling through life and space.
AN ACT INSPIRED BY THE FRANCOPHONIE AT WOMADelaide 2025
Owelu Dreamhouse (Australia)
Sat & Mon
Naarm/Melbourne-based Afro-futuristic ensemble Owelu Dreamhouse crafts a cinematic psychedelic-soul sound that celebrates the full spectrum of identity, and the diverse lives of the members. Not just a band, Owelu Dreamhouse is more like a village of talented musicians from across the country, delivering a sound that transports audiences to a place of celebration, introspection and pure musical joy.
Created by Nkechi Anele and Nic-Ryan Glenie, who performed together in soul-funk outfit Saskwatch, the band blends psychedelic-soul and West African musical traditions, featuring captivating horn lines dancing over dynamic rhythms, addictive melodies and grooving bass-lines. Their debut single, Africa BaBa offers a tantalising glimpse into what’s to come for Owelu Dreamhouse, who spent early 2024 recording an album slated for release in 2025.
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There you have it. 13 acts from, or with influences from, France and the Francophonie coming to WOMADelaide 2025. First release pricing ends today with final release pricing starting tomorrow, Thursday 16 January. You can save up to $20 per person by booking your ticket today.
KEY INFO FOR WOMADELAIDE 2025
WHAT: WOMADelaide 2025 (WOMAD = World of Music and Dance)
WHEN: Friday 7 – Monday 10 March
WHERE: Botanic Park, Adelaide
HOW: Purchase your tickets via the website
HOW MUCH: Ticket prices depend on how many days you choose to attend WOMADelaide 2025 for. Children 12 and under enter for free with any paying adult. There are also discounts available for Concession card holders and Youth (those aged 13 to 17).
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If you’re looking for events related to France and the Francophonie happening this month, check out our What’s on in January