Rainforest World Music Festival

July/August

Musicians and music enthusiasts from all over the world gather on the large island of Borneo, Malaysia, to celebrate indigenous culture and artistic diversity at the Rainforest World Music Festival. This three-day event features a diverse group of performers hailing from various islands of the Malaysian archipelago, neighboring countries of Southeast Asia, and around the world.
The festival is organized by the Malaysia Tourist Board and takes place at the Sarawak Cultural Village, an ethnic-themed park situated in Borneo's jungle. Since 1997, the program has featured a balance of cultural education and entertaining performances. Both the festival and the village attract tourists who are engaged in indigenous customs and expressions and may already be familiar with such exotic instruments as the boat lute, jaw harp, and nose flute.
Over the years events have been organized in conjunction with the music festival, including the Folk Art Forum, which addresses issues of cultural exchange and economic sustainability for folk artists, and the Rainforest World Craft Bazaar, inaugurated in 2008 as an opportunity for indigenous peoples to sell their wares and demonstrate their various skills as craftspeople.

CONTACTS:
Sarawak Tourism Board
6th & 7th Fl.
Yayasan Sarawak Bldg.
Jalan Masjid
Kuching, Sarawak 93400 Malaysia
www.sarawaktourism.com

References in periodicals archive

Caption: Performers at the Rainforest World Music Festival in Sarawak

Rainforest Festival is more than music

"The Rainforest World Music Festival has been on our radar for a few years now," explained Jamie Smith.

Folk outfit head off to the rainforest; PREVIEW: Jamie Smith's Mabon - various venues, Wales

Their newest documentary film is BORNEO & BEYOND: The Rainforest World Music Festival. Learn more at the NORTHERN LIGHTS STUDIO website, www.NLSCreativeMedia.com

Echoes of Nature: The Madeira Film Festival

Dafydd Roberts Sain has landed licensing deals worth as much as PS20,000 through attendance in the past, and its artists have performed at Rainforest World Music Festival in Malaysia, Mexico's International Rainbow Gathering and other events thanks to Womex-related contacts.

We'll turn pop into pounds for music industry; Welsh delegation at Greek event

For the past two years, the Sarawak Cultural Village, just outside of Kuching, has hosted the Rainforest World Music Festival, an event uniting local musicians with international "world music" recording artists in a weekend of performances and collaborative workshops.

Most of the SCV houses and larger stages were used at some point during the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) for special activities.

The prominent singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Zuriani, also from Kuala Lumpur, joined the festival with her own high-tech pop music creations, and members of the music department of Kuala Lumpur's Malaysia Institute of Art mixed various Malaysian, Chinese, and Western traditions "to create a music that has a particularly 'Malaysian' identity." (The Rainforest World Music Festival 1998 program notes, p.

The Rainforest World Music Festival 1999 saw a reduction in the overall number of performers, and a balance of representation between the Sarawakian, other Malaysian, and international groups.

Swinging into the global music scene at the Rainforest World Music Festival, Kuching, Sarawak. (Brief Communications)

In this climate, the purity of musical styles is less defined and a world music festival such as the annual Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) in Borneo presents traditional music of many lands often tinged with influences of other genres, instruments, and sounds of the 21st century.

The Rainforest World Music Festival happens every July in the large state of Sarawak, East Malaysia on the island of Borneo.

The Rainforest World Music Festival is a place to soak in the joyous music and dance from groups like Kenge Kenge from Kenya, and the truly electrifying bhangra band Kissmet, asking the audience to "scream from their hearts".

Rainforest World Music Festival 2011