FURTHER acts have been announced for Womad festival in Charlton Park near Malmesbury this summer including Oumou Sangaré, Goat, Eliza Carthy and Orchestra Baobab.

The bill for this year’s Womad festival is as diverse as ever with more than 40 acts now announced for the four day summit of music, art, dance, food, wellbeing, discussion and family adventures.

Stylish, feisty and charismatic, Mali’s Oumou Sangaré is not only one of the most powerful female voices in world music but a striking role model who has used her music to campaign fearlessly to improve the position of women across Africa.

Since her first album announced the arrival as a rising new star of African music more than a quarter of a century ago, she’s sold out concert tours around the globe to become an international phenomenon.

The mysterious masked men who create an intoxicatingly psychedelic mix of rock, Afrobeat, funk, chants and tribal drums under the name Goat sprang from nowhere in 2012 to take the musical world by storm with an album aptly titled World Music.

Since then they’ve released a second equally monumental album, but we’ve found out surprisingly little about them other than that they come from Sweden and prefer to let their music do the talking.

Their determination to remain anonymous, of course, has only enhanced their enigmatic status as one of the hippest names to drop in both rock and world music circles.

The ebullient folk singer and fiddler Eliza Carthy continues on her mission to take British traditional song to places it has never been before with her latest project, The Wayward Band, featuring a ‘who’s-who’ of names in the folk world and whose live shows are exhilarating adventures in keeping traditional music vibrant and contemporary.

The opening Thursday night of the festival finds Senegal’s veteran dance band Orchestra Baobab taking the stage along with Brazilian Afrobeat band Bigixa 70 and the Malmesbury School Project, whose annual performance has become a much-loved Womad tradition and this year will perform with the Bristol-based global-folk outfit Sheelanagig.

Among those making their first-ever appearances in the UK are Tanzania Albinism Collective, a group put together by Grammy award winning producer Ian Brennan from members of the ostracised albino community and Las Cafeteras, a thrilling Chicano band from the US who mix styles from both sides of the border with Mexico.

Other Womad newcomers include the wild Brazilian fusions of Mèta Mèta, a solo project led by Bill Laurence, pianist with the acclaimed Grammy award winning jazz mavericks Snarky Puppy, and the Italian folk band Officina Zoè.

Watch this space for more exciting announcements for Womad.

  •  WOMAD Charlton Park 2017 takes place at Charlton Park, near Malmesbury in Wiltshire, between Thursday, July 27 and Sunday, July 30. Tickets and full details can be found at womad.co.uk