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Opening Ceremony and Welcome Party, 12 July 2007 |
It gets harder and harder to review Sarawak’s Rainforest World Music Festival without sounding like someone who’s had a lobotomy and can’t stop grinning like an imbecile. Especially when this was the great 10th anniversary reunion we’d been anticipating since the end of last year’s bash.
So I’ll start from the bottom of the scale of joy with the unmistakable pong of dogshit as I checked into my room at the Santubong Resort, which houses the performers and media guests every year. Then I noticed the dogs and their handlers stationed around Cell Blocks 8 and 9 (which accentuated the penitentiary architecture of this remotely-located 3-star hotel all the more). I found out later the dogs were part of a bomb-sniffing team imported from the Philippines for the occasion. The Sarawak Tourism Board was taking no chances. A 55-man security team from Miri was on hand to scan festival-goers at the entrance with metal detectors. Sign of the paranoid times…
But the moment the music begins the untameable magic of Santubong kicks in… and petty discomforts like the clammy heat and long queues for the shuttles fade from memory. How many sweet and sweaty bodies were counted on Saturday night alone, grooving to the music? 9,000…11,000? I don’t know, but from where I stood near the stage it was certainly the hugest crowd I’ve seen since the festival’s quiet start in 1998.

On the bill were 19 of the hottest acts drawn from the previous nine years: Black Umfolosi, the ever-popular gumboot-dancing a capella group from Zimbabwe made their third appearance – and, once again, had the crowd waving their hands and singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in perfect unison. Gets a tad tiresome for the jaded ones like me – but it’s soulful stuff, I admit.
Black Umfolosi strut their stuff on the first night of the festival

Shooglenifty rides again at the Rainforest World Music Festival!
The third band to have played three times at the RWMF was Inka Marka – a South American group based in Melbourne. As usual, their mellifluous voices blended with panpipes, charango, and flute to conjure the uplifting poignancy of the Andes.

From Madagascar we had Tarika Be, featuring the alluring sisters Hanitra (pronounced “Anch”) and Noro, with an instrumentalist named Njaka in tow, whose sensitivity as a musician was remarkable for one so young.

Throughout the three days the general atmosphere was one of jubilation and joy. There was one outbreak of drunken aggro, promptly managed by the security crew, but the greatest annoyance by far were several loudmouthed sons-of-lumberjacks who insisted on jabbering inanely near the stage during quiet moments. However, even the intrusive foreground noise (compounded by the moans and sighs of tabla-player Siar Hachimi’s all-girls fan club) couldn’t deter Ensemble Kaboul from delivering a superb and heartfelt performance.
Khaled Arman, master of the rebab (which he plays like a sitar) engages with Siar Hachimi on tabla
Mas Y Mas captured in action on 13/07/07 by Antares
Arguably the biggest hit this year were Mas Y Mas – an entire Latin Afro-Cuban orchestra compressed into an ebullient trio from Nottingham, U.K. Featuring a spritely Wayne D. Evans on a hundred-year-old doublebass, Richard Kensington on percussion, and the incredibly talented Rikki Thomas-Martinez on guitar and lead vocals, Mas Y Mas (which means “more and more”) are indeed well-named. Every time they played - on stage or at their Latin Rhythms workshop - people kept demanding more and more of their infectious music and wit. Mas Y Mas first played at the RWMF in 2004 and instantly fell in love with Malaysia. Certainly it’s been a love reciprocated.

At their first appearance two years ago the Foghorn Stringband from Oregon got the crowd square-dancing under the stars. As traditional American country bands go, Foghorn plays as tight as it gets – but after three numbers their songs start sounding pretty much the same. From Peninsular Malaysia we had the Aseana Percussion Unit which features gifted homegrown percussionists like Kamrul Bahri Hussin and Kirubakaran. The group’s colourful exuberance and its muhibbah repertoire of crowd-pleasing numbers carried it through – but they were conspicuously lacking in emotional depth and musical substance.
Khac Chi, a versatile, Vancouver-based husband-and-wife act from Vietnam, are in a class of their own in terms of sheer musical skill and entertainment value. They travel with a portable museum of traditional and homemade instruments – mostly bamboo, with a few constructed by Chi himself from rubber honkers.
Bich and Chi have perfected a workshop routine with high amusement and amazement quotients

Randy Raine-Reusch & Tabuh Pak Ainal improvise on dulcimer, djembe and Malay drums
Sarawak was represented by sape virtuoso Jerry Kamit; a dynamic father-and-son percussion act called Tabuh Pak Ainal (named after Johari Morshidi’s precocious 16-year-old son Ainal, who began performing at 7); and the 30-member Kelapang Kelabit Bamboo Band (whose early set I unfortunately missed).
Mah Meri ceremonies and rituals are a rare and spectacular visual feast
However, I was very glad I caught the Mah Meri of Carey Island in action. Theirs was a visually spectacular act, rarely seen outside the confines of tribal tradition, and I was impressed by how impeccably they presented themselves before such a huge crowd of strangers. Another great opening act I witnessed was the item by Anak Adi’ Rurum – a beautiful bunch of Kelabit youngsters under the tutelage of Nikki Lugun whose sincerity and passion to preserve a fading culture brought an unexpected tear to the eye.

As is often the case, the real finale happened spontaneously after the festival – when Enrique Sanchez (Inka Marka) and Rikki Thomas-Martinez (Mas Y Mas) began singing romantic Latin duets at the poolside and Garry Finlayson (Shooglenifty) whipped out his banjo and proceeded to play some exquisitely epiphanic riffs. Soon the Foghorn fellows began insinuating their prudish 4/4 beats into the mix - but just as I was on the verge of wandering off to bed, a few members of Black Umfolosi jumped in with their Zulu chants and transformed the cowpokes into true-blue world musicians. I finally dragged myself from that festive scene with the trill of magpies serenading the dawn.
EPILOGUE
The Sarawak Tourism Board has done such a great job with the Rainforest World Music Festival it has now become a famous fruit-bearing tree whose seeds are being planted in other gardens. Indeed, Penang just hosted its first world music festival from July 20-22 with RWMF artistic director Yeoh Jun Lin leading the team. And rightly so, for Ms Yeoh herself was originally a product of Penang.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SARAWAK TOURISM BOARD
VIDEO CLIPS © ANTARES/MAGICK RIVER
[More video clips will be added as I finish editing and compressing. Bookmark this blogpost and return over the next few days for more great moments from RWMF 2007!]*This review first published @ kakiseni.com
First posted 26 July 2007
7 comments:
Gosh. It's going to be hard topping this one. You are a rainforest daddie yourself, as Aminah mentioned. Great review. Makes me wish the RWMF would come again like next month! Sadly, of course, there will be new bands, but fortunately it will give us a chance to meet and be inspired by a whole new bunch of bands. I'm a festival slut fo sho now Antares :D
Thanks for letting me relive the memories while I churn out stories at work!
antares, you nailed it again. love it. :)
joe ng
Great review! However, i feel that you have been unfair and over critical over the festival favorite The Aseana Percussion Unit. '
'The group’s colourful exuberance and its muhibbah repertoire of crowd-pleasing numbers carried it through – but they were conspicuously lacking in emotional depth and musical
substance. ''
They were clearly the crowd favorites! I have never felt so proud to be Malaysian ever to see such an amazing group of passionate musicians giving their all..some 7000 people singing along to 'Rasa Sayang' can't be lacking in emotional depth! Especially when they have connected so well to the people!
Just try google for blogs on the RWMF, they were almost EVERYBODY'S favorite or highlight of all the 3 days!
Maybe you shouldn't be so critical towards our local boys, they did the country proud and stood out among musicians from all over the globe! That guy on the african drum thingy was as good or even better than an african drummer!
Malaysia boleh!
Most of the members of APU are people I know personally. I wouldn't dishonor them with less-than-honest feedback. They're all technically superb musicians, but much too "cari makan" for my taste. 7,000 people singing "Rasa Sayang" can't be wrong, you say. Well, yelling slogans and voting BN or Bush doesn't make anyone a patriot... and one billion Chinamen named Yip or Yap can find themselves barking up the wrong tree. But that's just my opinion, Ashley - and it doesn't matter one bit whether "almost EVERYBODY" agrees with it. I'm sure APU will be performing again on Merdeka day, no matter what I say :-)
I'm going to have to agree with Antares here. As much as I'd love to be a patriot, blind patriotism isn't my cup of teh tarik. APU are good, but they weren't good that night. And that is my honest opinion. They were lacking in emotional depth, and there was so much more they could have done. Cohesion was one of the biggest mistakes I think, as in they had none. I'm friends with some of them, and I'd be an awful friend to not tell the truth.
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