World Music Expo opens in Budapest
The Palace of the Arts in Budapest, which will host the opening and closing ceremonies of WOMEX 2015 (Zsolt Andrasi under a CC licence)
21 October 2015
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Samuel Goff
The world’s largest world and folk music networking and development event, the World Music Expo — or WOMEX for short — opens in Budapest today.
The 21st iteration of the event will see over 3,000 delegates from 90 countries visit the Hungarian capital for a five-day programme of performances, conferences, and trade fairs. This is the first time that WOMEX, which is organized by the Berlin-based Piranha Arts group, has been hosted in east Europe. In 2014 the expo was held in Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
The opening gala will see Hungarian group Gypsy HeartBeats perform at the Béla Bartók Palace of the Arts, as part of a celebration of the rich musical heritage of the Carpathian region that spans Hungary and Romania.
The expo’s Director of Music Programming, Alexander Walter described Budapest as an ideal setting. “Hungary has always been at the crossroads of migrating peoples who have brought their own traditions to enrich the cultural fabric,” he said, highlighting the expo’s guiding principle of promoting cultural diversity.
