The Hindu Business Line : World music in the air

Nearing half-past six in the late-July evening, the sky above Penang island turned slate grey and big drops of rain began to fall, slowly building into a tropical downpour. But the menacing rumbles of thunder were quickly drowned out by the pounding drumbeats of Darsa, the group from Sarawak that kicked off the three-day World Music Festival in Penang.

Organised by Malaysia’s Ministry of Tourism jointly with Tourism Malaysia, Penang Tourism Action Council and the Sarawak Tourism Board as part of the country’s 50th year of nationhood celebrations, the event was a feast of offbeat music.

In all, 14 bands — 11 international and three Malaysian — converged at the Taman Kuari, or the Quarry Gardens, next to Penang’s Botanical Gardens, showcasing music from cultural or community-inspired roots, and resonating with unique ethnic sounds. While a similar festival, the Rainforest World Music Festival, has been conducted for ten years in a row at Sarawak, this was the first time such a concert series was held in Penang. Music tourism is the latest draw in this picturesque island-resort, with its offering of great beaches and seaside sports, delicious cuisines, heritage monuments, vibrant craft and art and pristine rainforest trails.

Darsa featured powerful vocals by two women in colourful, ethnic costumes, with brilliant accompaniment on the asape, the huge traditional string instrument ungainly to look at but incredibly rich and melodious in its multi-layered ton ality. The soft, slow, clear songs alternated with the high-energy rhythm pieces that had the 3,000-strong crowd cheering and clapping to the beat, setting the tone for what was to be a lovely audience-performer interaction over the next few days. Despite heavy rain on two evenings, the audiences stayed put for the performances, even if they had to stand under umbrellas for much of the time.

A low-pitched layering of deep notes launched the Narasirato Pan Pipers’ performance, with the drums and vocals gradually joining in the full-throated celebration. The pipers belong to a tribe from the remote Are’are reg ion of Malaita Island, which is one of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The lead singer told the audience that “we are living traditionally”, fishing, hunting and farming at subsistence level, while pursuing their inherent passion for song and dance. Their traditional costumes, rich harmonies and percussion, combined with high-voltage dancing, had the audience up on its feet, matching the footwork and the chorus vocals to perfection. From small ‘soprano’ panpipes to huge bass blown pipes, stamping tubes and small drop tubes — the pipers played them all.

The music depicts everyday village sounds, bird and animal calls, oceans and rivers, rustling trees, children playing or crying, people at work or singing to a loved one, and even good neighbourliness.

Ensemble Kaboul featured four Afghan musicians living in exile in Europe. The group won BBC Radio’s World Music Award in 2003. For over 20 years, when music was banned during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, musicians either fl ed the country or stopped performing. Now, singing is heard again and people are learning to play long-forgotten instruments. Ensemble Kaboul wants to spread understanding of Afghan classical music and instruments.

The instruments are age-old — the zerbaghali, an afghan drum, the tabla, dholak, daf and the rubab, a lute that is, according to the group’s Kha led Arman, “the father of the sarod”.The ‘ragas’ are brilliant, strings of haunting crystal-clear notes. The voices echo the call of the Sufis, the romance of the ghazal.

Dizu Plaatjies’ Ibuyambo, fromsub-Saharan desert regions (‘Ibuyambo’ means renewal), wants to keep alive the old ways and culture of its people for the coming generations. The high-energy performance sees Plaatjies ma sterfully playing the marimba — a resonated xylophone tapped with wooden hammers.

The powerful vocals, especially of the women, evoke the history of their people, the sounds of the jungle, matched by racy drumming and dancing.

Farafina from Burkina Faso joined Plaatjies’ band on stage, and added its own intricate vocal melodies and harp-like instrument called the kora, to create innovative fusion sounds.

The different groups may have sounded different but the stories were similar — simple tales of friendship and love, long sagas of victories in battle, a rambunctious wedding song, a song in praise of a faithful horse or a paean to the forces of Nature — blurring borders and diminishing the distinctions of race or continent.

Thus, when Inka Marka of Peru, resplendent in embroidered white ponchos, took centre-stage it was again a feast of soulful and sweet romantic ballads, full of shimmering riffs and improvisations, alternated with lively folk dance mu sic from high up in the Andes. They played the quena (bamboo flute), panpipes, guitar, charango (lute), violin and percussion and wowed the crowd with old favourites like ‘El condor pasa’.

Another well-loved Malaysian band was Kamrul Hussin’s Thundering Drums, a group of 12 schoolchildren from Penang. Their performance was marked by fluid movement and percussion talent on huge Chinese wushu drums. Also of the mountains, high up in the Mongolian steppes, from a tiny nation wedged between Siberia and Mongolia, were the majestic Huun Huur Tu, the throat singers of Tuva. Quite the piece de resistance of the evening, this group of four serious and venerable musician s had the audience first stunned into awed silence, then electrified by the booming reverberations of the tungur (shaman drum). The youngsters in the crowd were leaping up and down and head-banging as they would have at any rock show!

The singing is unique. An awesome moulding of the human voice whereby a person can produce two or three different layers of sound at one time!

This ancient art of khoomei, or overtone singing, is part of the ritual of mimicking nature — the mountains, grasslands, wind, water and light. On stage they were later joined by three members of the Russian band Malerija with their 21st century dance pulsations. The contrast was electrifying, both visually and aurally.

Equally vibrant was the music of Tamorra, the group of six from the Sicilian capital of Palermo, with fiery impassioned vocals and huge tambourines (tamorrras). The songs were intense and personal, Sicilian ballads of love, families , death, even salt!

A hugely popular group at the festival was the Foghorn Stringband, a quintet of young men who play string music of the Appalachians and the Mid-West, and some of which can be traced back to the 1700s. This sound of rural America has touches of bluegrass and a strong Irish influence. The fiddle is the main instrument, and the mandolin plays along with the voices backed by a plucked banjo, snappy guitar and a relentless double-bass. The players sing, tap their feet, and often dance to the music.

Equally popular was Mas-y-Mas (More and More), a UK-based trio comprising Rikki Thomas-Martinez on the Spanish guitar, Wayne Evans with his 100-year-old double-bass, and Richard Kensington on the congas, bass drum and various percus sion instruments.

The soft-spoken, friendly guys unleash the energy of a big Spanish ensemble, with flamenco-style fiesta music, a few traditional songs and some of their own compositions. Their music brought out their concern for the environment, for the deprived, and their anguish at an unjust war. One song drew attention to places in the world “where there’s not much water, food, warmth or love, while swimming pools in many places in Europe are full.”

Coming as they did shortly after the Live Earth concerts, many of the festival performances also focused on the urgency to save our planet against global warming — this issue is also central to Malaysia’s eco-conservation and eco-friendly tourism efforts.

The grand finale saw high-energy samba percussion from Wicked Aura Batucada, the biggest band at the festival. Batucada is an offshoot of Brazil’s popular samba dance, performed at breakneck speed and characterised by repetiti ve, near-hypnotic beats.With nothing Brazilian about this group, which is from Singapore, there was intense passion in their music and drumbeats.

Fusion is certainly here to stay, be it in music, food, art or literature, and nowhere does this ring truer than in the richly varied and cohesive Malaysian ethos. The eclectic mix of people and cultures at the World Music Festival amplified this loud and clear.

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