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Published in International Herald Tribune
by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 2002
SANTUBONG, Sarawak, Malaysia
"Odd notes on the right, even on the left," Rajery explains as he strums and plucks a spirited rhythm on his bamboo valiha. It comes as a surprise to see that he has no fingers on his right hand. Rajery, a musician from Madgascar, passes the meter-tall instrument to his new friend, Ragug anak Raot, who lives in Sarawak on the island of Borneo. "Now you try." Ragug tentatively fingers the valiha, which is longer and thinner than the stocky rhatong he's used to. He strums a bit, then, more assertively, tries to play one of the ethnic Bidayuh melodies he has grown up with. But the sound is alien and Ragug looks confused. Rajery sees the problem. "My valiha uses a diatonic, a western scale, but his rhatong is on the pentatonic scale," Rajery explains in French. But even when the explanation is translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Ragug looks bewildered. Nevertheless, he is happy. He has just met a "brother." Rajery, 36, who lives on the world's 4th biggest island, had never been to Borneo, the world's 3rd largest island. And Ragug anak Daot, 55, had never even heard of Madagascar before this encounter. They share no common spoken language, but both play similar instruments, so they're getting along just fine. The two artists came together at the Rainforest World Music Festival, a musical jewel that might also be the world's best-kept musical secret. The small annual Festival takes place on Sarawak's coast; where jungle-clad limestone cliffs create an imposing setting for the Sarawak Cultural Village. In July 2001, for the fourth year running, some 6,000 music fans came to Santubong, 40 minutes from Sarawak's capital Kuching, to listen to Mongolian throat singers from Mongolia, a local musician who plays an electric sapeh and who has been called "Sarawak's Jimmy Hendrix," a nose flute player from the isolated Penan tribe, gangly, rambunctious Scottish lads with electric fiddles, and a grande Sudanese diva. And did I mention the blonde Colombian who sings South American cowboy songs? Imagine the atmosphere. You're sweating in the afternoon heat at a music workshop with several dozen other music lovers on the porch of an Iban longhouse and you're watching a group of brothers from Burkino Fasso - they drum, rattle, strut and sing and the language they sing in is irrelevant and the only thing that counts is their energy and infectious good nature. The bamboo floor of the longhouse is starting to bounce. The brothers are joined by a maracas player from South America who is joined by chanting Native American women from Canada who are joined by a Bidayuh tribal gong player from Sarawak, who is joined by…well, you get the picture. Yeoh Jun Lin, the festival's program director, says the "workshops are the soul" of the festival. "We hope there will be a real exchange of musical ideas," she adds, pointing out workshop themes like "Pluck Pluck", a workshop of incredible energy in which a Colombian harp player and a Mongolian harp player and a Scottish rock violinist and a Sarawak bamboo xylophonist introduced a cocktail-shaker atmosphere where the final product, like a curry, was more than the sum of its parts. Probably the most charismatic group this year in Santubong was Badenya, comprised of three ever-smiling Coulibaly brothers and one cousin from Burkina Fasso. In one workshop Ousseni, wearing a baseball cap and shorts, played the n'goni, a boldly patterned stringed-calabash that he held between his knees. He got a sound out of it that was like running water, repetitive but moving, relaxing but dynamic, which reminded me of a West African improv on Schubert's Trout Quartet. Put him on the main stage though with his siblings and the energy level increases a hundred-fold. I dare you not to feel good after dancing to one of their sets. Karin Stein, who constantly had to reassure people that she was a third-generation born and bred Colombian even though she was tall, blonde and spoke perfect American English, came with two fellow musicians. Her group Los Llaneros performed songs of the Colombian pampas in the eastern part of the country along the border with Venezuela. She sang music of the women whose men went off on cattle drives, and good-natured campfire music, and rollicking music that resembled in energy the theme from the Magnificent Seven. Borte, the Mongolian group, were liberated in a different sense of the word, having escaped from Mongolia in 1990 during the oppressive Russian period. They now live in Germany. Dagvan's compatriots add a further surreal dimension. In performance, Chuluunbat Munkh-Erdene, who plays a curved board harp, resembles the Queen in "Through the Looking Glass." She has an imperturbable round face, wears dark rimmed glasses, and is dressed in thick layers of bright orange and royal blue brocade robes, accented by yellow silk, with a tiny gilt crown. Open your eyes and you see a fairy-tale come to life; close your eyes and you hear a celestial harp, making music that in its range and energy exceeds any other harp I've ever heard. Musicians in Borte play a melancholy and exotic-sounding Chinese single string guitar, then an angelic harp and a Tibetan Buddhist oboe, then the group picks up the tempo and the sound resembles bluegrass, then evolves into a faster rhythm and the image is of a Mongolia version of the theme from the TV show "Rawhide," cowboys galloping across the steppes. One night on the main stage, Shooglenifty, who play what Malaysian singer Antares, one of the festival's pioneering performers, calls "kick-ass Celtic hypno-funkadelic" invited Borte to join them. The band called the resulting blend a "thrash-metal-Mongolian-Celtic mix". Imagine the scene when the formal Mongolians jam with the mad Scots -- the fluffy-bearded Scots are dressed for the beach in T-shirts and shorts, while the Mongolians are elegant in royal blue satin robes with gold embossed leather breast plates. The Scottish lads in Shooglenifty are the life of the party -- manic, frenetic, agile, and exuberant. While they are outspoken westerners they're really just party animals and they get the place moving. The Rainforest Festival is hardly Woodstock (the most mind-altering chemical you can get is locally-brewed tuak rice wine, the most transforming experience you can acquire is a tattoo) but nevertheless Shooglenifty has everyone on their feet, dancing and moving under the tropical moon.
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