For the first time, the rain held off for the duration and this most-relaxed and family friendly festival seemed to come of age. It was good to see more global acts on the bill than last year but with a big Barbican season on Gypsy music going on and the African Music Festival just over, it should have been possible to ramp this up much further (hopefully for next year).

Catch the festival in pictures on Flykr

Sunday was mostly about the main outdoor stage with Eliza Carthy and Ed Harcourt reprising their collaboration from the Pirates of the Caribbean and delivering a stream of songs about murder and misery introduced by the remarkably chipper Eliza. Zion Train showed what one very bouncy man, some unoriginal bass lines and a couple of brass musicians can do and Ba Cissoko’s band charmed but didn’t quite dazzle as they are capable of doing.

For energy and I mean a lot of energy, the crown has to go to Balkan Beat Box, whose chaotic amalgam of Balkan melodies, hip hop and fat bass lines would have raised the dead from their slumbers. A surprisingly effective alternative rifling of the Balkan thing was the carnivalesque poetry of The Destroyers set to their own brand of Klez-Mex.

A performance on Saturday by Rodrigo y Gabriela left people wandering around stunned by the virtuosity on display. To watch these two up-close is to be dazzled by their astonishing sense of timing and attack on the guitar. It is not just that they play their guitars well, it’s the percussive range that they get from them that leads one to suspect that if someone stole their guitars they would be able to make two boxes sound great.

Anoushka Shankar also went down like a storm in the big tent. BBC Asian Network had sponsored this stage and ensured an Asian theme to the day (although there was more of a dance than classical Asian music twist to proceedings).

The evening was split with Fun Lovin’ Criminals holding court on the main stage and firing funk bombs among the homages to New York gangsters, while Trans-Global Underground took over the tent with their unique mix of dance-dub-Asian-funk to an audience that were clearly lapping it up.

On Friday night, a huge crowd, jumped, clapped and pumped the air with their fists for The Levellers, the perfect festival band. Wychwood had finally arrived as a serious festival in its own right.

The musical highlight of the first day at Wychwood was Etran Finatawa. Two Tamashek (Toureg) guitars pounding out desert blues of the sort familiar to fans of Tinariwen are joined by the percussive force of the beautifully made up Wodaabe section of the band. In a part of the world where there have always been tensions between Touregs and their neighbours, this band is a sign of hope and a rocking good way to end the evening.

We can’t wait for the summer and Wychwood is the harbinger of all things summery and festival-like for us at Fly. We continue our proud association with Wychwood.

Wychwood 2007 Artists Confirmed as at 23 February 2007

FRIDAY
Levellers
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
Etran Finatawa
Rory McLeod
Adjágas

SATURDAY
Fun Lovin’ Criminals
Anoushka Shankar
Go Lem System
Martha Tilston
Tobias Froberg
3 Daft Monkeys

SUNDAY
Ba Cissoko
Balkan Beat BoxCountry Joe Macdonald
Eliza Carthy
Kitty, Daisy & Lewis
Magic Skool Bus
Shooglenift
Subgiant
Zion Train

Link: Wychwood Festival

Photo by Damian Rafferty of Etran Finatawa at Wychwood