WOMAD 2017 was the year that the festival became truly boho with Bokante, Bombino and Bourne among the Saturday highlights.

The multi-national band Bokante – drawn from the USA, Caribbean, Canada, Sweden and Japan – were a revelation playing the final set of a two-month world tour.

New York bass player Jay White and the three drummers/percussionists laid down the pulse, groove and (dare I say it) funk.

The melodies and soloing, alternatively snaky, dreamy and ethereal or raucous and rocky, were provided by four guitarists including Grammy-award winning Snarky Puppy front man Michael League and the lap steel virtuoso Roosevelt Collier.

Bringing the heady brew together with a large dollop of charismatic Creole soul was singer/lyricist Malika Tirolien from Guadeloupe by way of Montreal.

It was a heady mix with O La and Jou Ke Ouva from their debut album Strange Circles being high spots.

If Queens of the Stone Age introduced us to the psychedelic desert rock of California, Oscar ‘Bombino’ Moctar gives it a Tuareg spin all the way from the Northern Sahara.

Robert Plant knows a good guitarist when he works with one and his former collaborator Bombino can shred with the best of them.

He and his band cut a dash, too, in their top-to-toe peacock colours and they certainly know how to strut.

The Bourne legacy came courtesy of a fun, joyous dance workshop put on by former cast members of legendary choreographer Matthew Bourne’s ‘Cinderella’.

This was a Zumba session for culture vultures. Move over Destiny’s Child, who’d have thought Prokofiev could be so bootylicious.

Later, the first swathe of evening rain helped swell the audience in the Siam Tent for personable young London rapper Loyle Carner.

Under a giant No.7 shirt of his beloved Liverpool, Carner gave a confident, swaggering performance befitting a young man who picked up a Mercury Prize nomination only last week.

Carner finished strongly with his most well-known track No CD, a recently written poem and a few choruses of ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’.