Straight away, the atmosphere at Womadelaide is calmer this year. On opening night, it is only 25C – the warmest it is forecast to be all weekend. After two years of temperatures in the 40s, this will be a festival to ease into. Even the bat colony at the entrance feels decidedly more settled. “I hear we missed a really hot one last year,” says Beoga’s Niamh Dunne later that night. “Us Irish ones would be in a puddle.”
This isn’t entirely the program the festival thought they would be presenting a fortnight ago. With the crisis in Iran, the festival had to rearrange flights for 101 artists, and four groups were cancelled – plus Palestinian DJ Sama’ Abdulhadi, whose visa wasn’t approved in time.
