Rainforest World Music Festival

The Rainforest World Music Festival is an annual 3-day music festival celebrating the diversity of "world music" formerly known as ethnic music held in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, that consists of cultural and musical workshop-oriented daytime events and the more concert-like music performances during the night.

The bands and groups which make up the performances and workshops run the whole gamut of pure ethnic music to world beat and jazzy fusion with both local traditional musicians and international bands from countries as far as Scotland, Madagascar, New Zealand, Mongolia and Zimbabwe.

History

The Festival was the brainchild of four people, originally Randy Raine-Reusch, a world music instrumentalist from Canada (with a band named ASZA), another fellow Canadian based in Kuching, Robert Basiuk (at that time the Marketing head of the Sarawak Tourism Board) and two brothers fronting the Society Atelier of Sarawak, Edric Ong, an architect/designer by profession and brother Edgar Ong, a former journalist and current film-maker.

The festival held its first show in 1997 and celebrated its 11th anniversary with the most recent festival which took place from July 11 to 15, 2008.

Features

The festival, which is held in the Sarawak Cultural Village, runs workshops, ethno-musical lectures, jamming sessions and mini concerts in the afternoon followed by evening performances held on the two main stages in the village. In the 2007 festival 20 bands performed for an 8000-strong audience.

While there are timetables for the workshops and evening performances, visitors are not required to keep to them as they are free to enter and leave any event at will. The daytime workshops are held inside various traditional houses in the village, where the performers or leaders of the events may even be on the same floor as the visitors, allowing them to get up close to the performers.

There are also no restrictions in communicating with the performers and musicians, and the musicians themselves sometimes encourage conversation, especially if it is regarding the topic of the workshop they are running or about the traditional instruments they use.

A book called "Music without Borders" was commissioned by the Tourism Board and written by Heidi Munan to commemorate the 10th anniversary. With a limited publication of 5000 copies, the lavishly produced publication showed many recent photos in full colour but lacked a balance view of the entire Festival, showing only the good and positive and ended up like a propaganda piece, despite subtle references to short-comings and fair comments on what could be done better or differently.

Food & Drinks

A variety of Malaysian and Asian cuisine are available from numerous vendors which set up various shops all around the village.

A very popular gathering-spot used to be the "Bamboo Bar" which sold beer,wines and spirits and cocktails, which for 3 years was operated by a group of wine/beer lovers and music fans. This was initiated by a German living in Kuching, Rudi Weissmann and a group of friends from South Africa,Australia,Iran,France, the UK and Kuching.

Nowadays, with Heineken sponsoring the affair most of this has vanished.

Security

During the 2007 festival there was a notable increase in security in and around the festival to prevent people from entering with false tickets or causing trouble. At the entrance visitors must present their tickets and then be given an official wrist band which has a security UV strip.

Metal detectors are also used to scan each visitor and backpacks and bags must be presented to the staff at the front gate to be searched. New to the additional security were guard dogs around the cultural village used to discourage the smuggling of drugs and narcotics into the festival.

External links

* [http://www.rainforestmusic-borneo.com/ Official website]
* [http://www.mumdjinphoto.com/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=73&album=73/ Photo gallery of the 2008 edition]