Rainforest World Music Festival 2008

11th July 2008 – Sarawak Cultural Village, is the place whereby the 11th RWMF2008 is held. To be precise, all the previous event of RWMF is held here. I started my travel to the place from my hotel at Grand Continental Hotel at 10:05am. Took the bus which cost RM 10 per way travel and total of RM 20 with return tickets. The price is definitely better than taking taxis as the taxis around here are still running on petrol. The travel on bus took approximately 30 minutes to reach Sarawak Cultural Village. There we present tickets and have wrist bands on our hands as paid visitor to the area.

Since being in Sarawak Cultural Village for the first time, I do not have an idea what’s in here for me. All I can do is explore the area and visit every corner of the area. First of all, I thought it’s purely on listening musicians play their tunes all day long but I was wrong. The preview of the live music play starts at 7:00am and ends at 12:00pm. Starting at 2:00pm till 6:00pm is the musical workshop and continue onwards from 7:00pm till late night would be the actual musical concert.

First day of the RWMF2008, I can say that this concert is much worthwhile if you’re attending them on the 2nd or 3rd day. Basically on the 1st day itself, it’s mainly on preparations. Quite surprising, even some of the musicians failed to turn out for the concert! Besides musical concert, there’s souvenir shops (which mainly consist of handcraft items) open for visitors to make their purchases, food marts, and exhibits. Celcom X-Pax is one of the main sponsors of the event, so was Shell.

Places to visit and learn are those Rumah Bidayuh, Iban Longhouse, Sword Making House, and etc. As for the workshop, I enjoyed the mixed group of musicians of different band on an event called “String Things” very much. Especially the three Portuguese guys which makes the event much better, they even did a very good job on the live concert itself. For the last workshop, I went for the harps. Too bad out of the 3, 2 of the musicians couldn’t make it for the event, hence there is only one African musician left who had try his very best to entertain the crowd on this workshop by himself with his Kora. I can feel his pressure but he did a very good job! Many or all of this musicians I never heard of them before, but they are really good. I really enjoy the workshop.

End of the day starting at 7:00pm, before the concert starts. It started to rain heavily. What would possibly a rainforest music festival do without rain? Even with the rain, we’re able to enjoy ourselves and best of all, after it stop rain, many run down back to the stage assembly and started dancing. Some of them played mud as well and really enjoying themselves. I wish I could join them in mud dancing as well but I was carrying my Sony D-SLR, thus I skipped the fun. The 11th RWMF2008, two words… It Rocks!

Here’s some of the pics taken with my Sony D-SLR. I apologize on the band naming as I forgotten their names 🙁 I’ll update them when I get the event sheet from Ka Koy.