Twenty-two years on, Womad is established as a unique musical institution. This year's festival was bigger than ever, offering everything from African rap to Irish protest but was dominated by songs from the borders of the Sahara.

Mali and Algeria are already famous for their music, and Mauritania should be too, judging from the British debut by a jovial, feisty singer known simply as Malouma. Born to a griot family of traditional musicians, she has become a controversial celebrity for her socially conscious songs, and the way she has mixed Moorish influences with anything from jazz to Western pop. Almost hidden by her pink robes and head-dress, she started out with low-key ballads, then veered off into bluesy guitar riffs, an unlikely desert treatment of early rock'n'roll and gospel, and then a soulful a capella finale. Here, surely, was a new global celebrity.

This is a region famed for powerful female singers. From Mali came the increasingly eclectic Rokia Traore, almost sabotaged by the airline that failed to load her band's instruments. She went ahead anyway, improvising a gently acoustic set until her n'gonis, balafon, drums and bass all finally arrived and she finished with a rousing, if truncated, dance work-out. She was followed by her compatriots Tinariwen, who came on wrapped in desert robes to play their rhythmic, slinky, and mesmeric African blues. There was another strong set from the Algerian star Souad Massi, switching between delicate ballads and rousing anthems. In France she's treated as a celebrity.

For those who preferred instrumental virtuosos there was Nigel Kennedy, looking like a punk Gypsy and joined by the classically trained Polish klezmer band Kroke for sturdy, sad-edged works from across Eastern Europe. Then there was Sixties hero Jorma Kaukonen, still leading the Jefferson Airplane's spin-off trio Hot Tuna, with their slick revival of folk-blues and country favourites like Waiting For a Train.

And there was David Byrne, dressed in a designer boiler suit and moving like a rag doll on roller skates. He's a passionate promoter of Latin styles, but concentrated on his own quirky songs, backed by a six-piece string section. His voice was surprisingly weak - he should never have attempted Verdi - but once he revived the old Talking Heads classics like Psycho Killer and Life During Wartime he could do no wrong. Is this world music? No-one was worried by a silly question like that.