Overview

Thomas Brooman was one of the organisers of the first Womad festival, held at the Royal Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, in 1982. That first event was an artistic triumph but a financial disaster. Womad survived, just, and Brooman went on to organise more than 150 Womad festivals around the world. His career with Womad came to an end in 2008, just weeks before the announcement that he was to be awarded a CBE by the Queen in her Birthday Honours List for services to music and charity. In his autobiography My Festival Romance, Brooman explores the musical influences of his childhood in Bristol and Buenos Aires; he describes how Womad developed out of the Bristol punk scene of the late Seventies; recalls his time organising festivals and travelling the world with some of the biggest names in music; and reflects upon life after Womad. The book includes black and white and colour photography. My Festival Romance is the story of a life lived for the love of music. A truly wonderful read. Miles Hunt, The Wonder Stuff

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9781910089583

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Born in Bristol in 1954, he attended Bristol Grammar School and spent time during his childhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He attended Oxford University, reading English Language and Literature at Exeter College under the tutorship of Jonathan Wordsworth, graduating in 1976. The second child in an academic family, his father Frederick S. Brooman was an author and economics lecturer at Bristol University, subsequently Professor of Economics at The Open University.Returning to Bristol after graduation from Oxford, Thomas took a path in music, firstly as a drummer during the heyday of punk music in the late 'seventies with several bands in Bristol, including The Media, The Spics and The Tesco Chainstore Massacre. In 1980, with a group of friends, he established a record magazine publication called The Bristol Recorder, and through this project made contact with the English artist Peter Gabriel with whom the concept of Womad was born.

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