Photos

Today I happened to re-visit the Nottingham Riverside Festival -we'd actually gone to Derby to look at and assess a world music festival there but it turned out not to exist.....what happened to it is a complete mystery.....it just wasn't where it should have been....no notices, no explanations!

So instead we drove to Nottingham and I discovered the joys and delights of the London Turkish band Oojami - urban belly dance beats......surprising how many women turned up in the crowd to do just that - but this young lady was on stage.......

From their website:

"In its live incarnation Oojami combines belly dancers with mesmerising Sufi dancing, providing a vivid musical experience for the eyes. Therefore it is no wonder that the band is building up a strong fan base of open-minded music fans eager to appreciate new and exciting global sounds.

"Oojami's music is groove orientated, but I like to use melodic parts to make it different," Necmi Cavli explains. "Although the major element is Turkish - because that's what I'm most familiar with - I aim to be more global. A global band with Turkish influences, rather than a Turkish or Anglo-Turkish band. However it is not very easy to identify what Turkish music is. It's really very difficult to tell where they originated from, whether from the Middle East or North Africa. For example, some of the most famous songs in Turkey are in fact of Arabic origin."