Explore . Dream . Discover .: Rhythm of Borneo - the Rainforest World Music Festival 2011

Finally I landed my feet in the Borneo Island. You see, Malaysia as a whole comprised on West Malaysia which is located in a peninsula south of Thailand, and East Malaysia which is located in Borneo Island along with part of Indonesia as well as Brunei. All these years as a Malaysian, I have never visited East Malaysia in Borneo before. Partly, it is because we need to fly to Borneo and on top of that, until few years ago, they used to impose the need to have a passport in order to enter the island although we are actually the same country. Funny? Yeah, don't ask me why.

So, why do I finally decided to visit Borneo? It is of course to attend one of world's best music festival, the Rainforest World Music Festival. This year, the theme is rhythm of Borneo and is into its 14th year.

I have not really attended a lot of music festival in other countries but I am definitely impressed with this one. First of, the music festival spans into 3 days in total and the programme starts as early as 2pm until midnight everyday. In fact, hotels in Santubong is fully booked like 6-9 months ahead because people do not mind to stay in Santubong and spend the entire 3 days there.

To start of with, the music festival is held in the Sarawak Cultural Village. Independently, this cultural village is already a must visit place in Sarawak on normal days. Located in Santubong, it is 30 mins drive from Kuching (according to guide book) but really it is almost an hour journey via bus. The cultural village is located at the foothill of this beautiful mystic Mount Santubong.

This cultural village is like a life museum where long houses of the Sarawak tribes are build. For example like this Melanau tribal house. Absolutely huge and stunning.

It is a 2-storey long house, the first I've seen

Although we don't get to experience the long house lifestyle, at least seeing the real size long house of different tribes is good enough.

OK back to the festival, it is basically divided into two sections. Beginning 2pm, they start the programme with Music Workshops. What they do is that they put musicians from different country in the same cateogy to explain about their musical instruments and then they jam together. It is most definitely interesting.

This is the 'Flying Fingers' Workshop. Obviously flying fingers will be used on strings instruments. They put together Jeff Scroggins (Blue Canyon Boys), Tangi Oillo (Startijenn), Ole Mathisen (Mamak Khadem), Tengit Usat and Asang Lawai (Sape Masters) and Andree Baudet (Kamerunga). But the hall is way too big and I enter a bit late to be sitting behind.

The 'Well Framed' Music Workshop features drums and tambourines. They put together Chris Murphy (Paddy Keenan), Mamak Khadem, Maciej (Warsaw), Antonio Melegari (Kamafei), Debbie and Sandy (Iskwew).

The third workshop I attended is the 'Pluck It' Workshop. Here we see Jeff Scroggins of Blue Canyon Boys doing his stuff.

Most interesting of all is the Leweton Women's Water Music. The first time I see music made out of water in the lake. If I'm not wrong, this is a very uniquely Vanuatu culture. Definitely eye-opening. They perform twice daily.

The main concert starts at 7pm all the way until 12 midnight daily. I only attended 1 out of 3 days fest, which is on Saturday. The main concert area has 2 stage and on Saturday, there are a total of 7 acts back to back non-stop. Imagine 5 hours non-stop life performance!

This is a wide-screen shot of the 2 stage. One very unique feature of Rainforest World Music Festival is that the staging is located in the middle of the rainforest jungle! So people just sit on the mud floor or some luckier one and don't mind sitting way back have wooden platform to roll their mat on. July is normally a rainy season in Borneo and for many it means watching concert in the rain and dancing in the mud. Lucky me (or unlucky), there is no rain but the atmosphere is fantastic.

Just look at the crowd, this shot only managed to captured about 1/3 of the crowd. I read that a total of 20,000 people attended the music fest this year.