Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Sounds from the Rainforest

Festival rocks with song, dance and jam sessions

After a year's absence, the World Beat team headed down South to the jungles of Borneo for the 14th Rainforest World Music Festival last week for three days of music, dancing, workshops and mad jam sessions by musicians after each night's concert.

The event is held annually at the Sarawak Cultural Village, about 35km outside Kuching, the capital of Sarawak state, in Malaysia. The festival site is set at the foot of Mount Santubong, where a collection of longhouses surround a small lake - it's an idyllic place for a festival.

After heavy rain at the past two festivals, the organisers have put in better drainage in front of the stage, rebuilt the second stage and one of the longhouses. And with full corporate sponsorship, the site had become better organised. The second stage no longer features short skits from comedic musical acts - and I must admit I missed these wacky, zany bands - but rather concerts by trios and quartets.

As with previous years, a highlight was the varied workshops held in the afternoons, in two sessions, which offered fans the chance to see performers up close. Percussion sessions like "Drum Dance", "Beat Guru" and "The Rhythm Method" drew packed (long) houses, as did the fiddle workshop, "Femme Fiddles". Two workshops that stood out for me were the string-themed "Flying Fingers" and a bagpipe special (I had no idea there are so many kinds of bagpipes) called "My Main Squeeze".

In between the workshops, festival-goers were treated to a rare and ancient tradition - water music from a lovely bunch of ladies from the Vanuatu islands in the Pacific. The Leweton Women's Water Music waded into the lake at the Cultural Village up to their waists and proceeded to beguile us all with percussive beats on the water that mimicked the sounds in their environment: The Sound of Rain on Water, Waves Breaking on the Reef and The Sound of the Dolphin, and so on. I enjoyed it so much I went back several times to watch how they made music using a material (water) that is fluid. Amazing.

Friday night kicked off the night shows with the soft, ethereal strings of the sape, or Borneo boat lute, played by the Masters of Sape - Mathew Ngau Jau, Tegit Asat and Asang Lawai. Matthew is a regular at the festival but I wondered what had happened to some of the younger players and bands we've had at previous festivals. In fact, with the next act, a gamelan ensemble from neighbouring Sabah, only two Malaysian bands played over the three days and there were no other bands from the region. That's something the organisers should look at.

The Friday night was, I thought, a bit flat, although the Victor Valdez Trio from Mexico livened up proceedings, as did one of my favourite bands from the festival, The Blue Canyon Boys from Kentucky, USA, who featured a fantastic banjo player, Jeff Scroggins, in their bluegrass music.

Europe dominated the early part of Saturday night, with The Shin from Georgia the pick and the pace picked up with a jaunty set from Ireland's The Paddy Keenan Trio, featuring Paddy himself on the uilleann pipes. The Warsaw Village Band then picked up the baton and whipped through a wonderful set of ancient Polish folk tunes, cranked up to the present day. The crowd was heaving by this point, ready to dance and Joaquin Diaz brought the place to fever pitch with his accordion-based merengue music from Dominica. You'll be hard pressed to find a faster dance music anywhere on the planet.

Continue reading (Incl. Pics) at: Sounds from the Rainforest
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