WOMEX (short for Worldwide Music Expo) is an international world music support and development project based in Berlin, whose main event is an exposition held annually in different locations throughout Europe. It integrates a trade fair, showcases, conferences, film screenings, networking sessions, and awards. Musicians and their labels have the possibility to make contacts for international touring and album distribution. For 2009–2011, WOMEX was hosted in Copenhagen, Denmark in a new partnership with WorldMusicFair Copenhagen, a consortium of the

Roskilde Festival The Roskilde Festival is a Danish music festival held annually south of Roskilde. It is one of the largest music festivals in Europe and the largest in the Nordic countries. It was created in 1971 by two high school students and a promoter. In 1 ...

, the

Copenhagen Jazz Festival Copenhagen Jazz Festival is a jazz event every July in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Copenhagen Jazz Festival was established in 1979, but beginning in 1964 Tivoli Gardens presented a series of concerts under the name Copenhagen Jazz Festiva ...

, and tourist organization

Wonderful Copenhagen "Wonderful Copenhagen" is a song and single (music), single written by Frank Loesser performed by Danny Kaye with Gordon Jenkins and his orchestra and released in 1953. It was taken from the 1952 film, Hans Christian Andersen (film), Hans Christ ...

. Additional partners were the events producers Welcome, the

Danish Center for Culture and Development Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...

Global CPH Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...

and

World Music Denmark In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

. Other locations of past WOMEX events: Berlin (1994, 1999, 2000), Brussels (1995), Marseille (1997),

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

(1998), Rotterdam (2001),

Essen Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and D ...

(2002, 2004), Newcastle upon Tyne (2005) and Seville (2003, 2006, 2007, 2008), Copenhagen (2009, 2010, 2011), Thessaloniki (2012), Cardiff (2013), Santiago de Compostela (2014 and again in 2016), Budapest (2015),

Katowice Katowice ( , , ; szl, Katowicy; german: Kattowitz, yi, קאַטעוויץ, Kattevitz) is the capital city of the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland and the central city of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area. It is the 11th most popul ...

(2017), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2018), Tampere (2019), digital edition Budapest (2020), Porto (2021) and

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

(2022). The 2023 WOMEX will be held in A Coruña.

Event

WOMEX runs during October every year, and in many cases, during the last October weekend. On-site registration begins on Wednesday, when the opening ceremony is held. Conference attendees can visit the opening event, the conference program, the trade fair, the showcases on the evenings of Thursday, Friday and Saturday and the WOMEX awards on Sunday, the last day of the event. Although WOMEX is primarily intended for professionals and trade visitors within the world music scene, locals and tourists can buy tickets for most of the evening showcases. In 2020, due to COVID-19, WOMEX for the very first time took place digitally.

Company

WOMEX was begun in 1994. Founders include Christoph Borkowsky and

Ben Mandelson Ben Mandelson (born 6 October 1953, in Everton, Liverpool, England) is an English world musician, and also manager and producer. Punk and new wave years In the mid-1970s, Mandelson was a student at Bolton Institute of Technology (now Bolton Univ ...

Awards

The WOMEX Awards were first introduced in 1999. Since then, WOMEX presents its awards to artists or professionals each year for special achievements in the international music industry. Since 2006 WOMEX, in coordination with World Music Charts Europe and, from 2017 on, also with Transglobal World Music Chart, has presented Top 20 labels of the year who had the most chart-topping artist releases.

Other music fairs

SXSW South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...

in Austin, Texas * Midem in Cannes, France * Jazzfest, in New Orleans, Louisiana * Moshito, in Johannesburg, South Africa *

Jazz Ahead Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major f ...

, in Bremen, Germany *

Classical Next Classical may refer to: European antiquity *Classical antiquity, a period of history from roughly the 7th or 8th century B.C.E. to the 5th century C.E. centered on the Mediterranean Sea *Classical architecture, architecture derived from Greek and ...

, location varies from year to year, just like WOMEX (same organizers). *

Berlin Music Week Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, as measured by population within city limits having gained this status a ...

, in Berlin, Germany * Medimex, in Bari, Italy * Reeperbahnfestival, in Hamburg, Germany *

Eurosonic Noorderslag Eurosonic Noorderslag is an annual four-day music showcase festival and conference held in January in Groningen, Netherlands. The first three days of the festival (Eurosonic) feature artists from all over Europe, the last day of the festival (N ...

in Groningen, The Netherlands *

Indonesian Music Meeting Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...

in Jogjakarta, Indonesia *

Visa for Music Visa for Music is a performing arts festival and professional marketplace for contemporary music from Africa and the Middle East. Its activities are addressing both professionals in the cultural and creative industries as well as the general pub ...

in Rabat, Morocco * Mundial Montréal in Montréal, Canada

References

External links

{{Commons category
Official website

virtualWOMEX

All artists who have performed at WOMEX
Music conferences Trade fairs in Germany World music festivals