What's On at Clarence Jazz Festival 2021

Put on your jazzy hat and head far south, far east of Tasmania to celebrate 25 years of jazz in Clarence. Festival buzzes from Wednesday 17 February 2021 for five days. By Mallika Naguran

The Clarence Jazz Festival is one of Tasmania’s most awaited musical events, held at Hobart’s Eastern Shore during summer.

Kartanya Maynard kicks off Clarence Jazz Festival 2021 at piyura kitina with a quartet

This year and for the first time, mostly Tasmanian artistes come before the bright stage lights, due to pandemic-related travel restrictions on international, even inter-state travel (although Tasmania has been COVID-19 free for some months).

Clarence Jazz Festival 2021 amps up diversity vibes (opening ceremony on the evening of Wednesday 17 February at sacred land piyura kitina or Risdon Cove; Kartanya Maynard Quartet (Wednesday 17 February evening); Arabic fusion McEntee & Mira (Friday 19 February 2215h at the Jazz Lounge); afrobeat and very danceable, bobbable Baba Bruja (Saturday 20 February, 1900h);

It promises “boundary-pushing” jazz too with a line-up of new material and composition: Jason Whatley Quartet from Launceston (Friday 19 February 1700h at the Jazz Lounge); festival ambassador Kelly Ottoway’s Keys Supergroup (Saturday 20 February, 2030h); Konrad Park’s masterclass/showcase of the Chapman Stick—a ten-string instrument… just to mention a few.

Masterclass with StickRad (Konrad Park) at Clarence Jazz Festival 2021 features new sounds with the ‘stick’

There’s Twilight Series involving winery visit (Thursday 18 February) and seaside park (Sunday 21 February); and a Big Day at Kangaroo Bay for all day and night musical experience on Saturday 20 February. Drink and dance to your heart’s delight!

Check out a few highlights below. Detailed shows could be found within the downloadable programme. 

Ticketed Concerts

Inside the Jazz Lounge, an intimate cabaret venue within Rosny Barn, there will be a series of premium ticketed concerts for the Clarence Jazz Festival 2021 featuring a stellar line-up of Tasmanian musicians. Jazz Lounge at Rosny Barn

~ Friday Session 1:  Jason Whatley Quintet + Susannah Coleman Brown Quartet  ~ Friday Session 2: Spike Mason Quartet + McEntee & Mira ~ The Gus Leighton Quartet ~ Liam & CO ~ Jamie Pregnell Quartet

Master Classes ($25 per session)

Learn from the jazz masters. Master classes are open to musicians of any level for an intensive 90 minutes of music within the beautiful sandstone walls of Rosny Barn.

~Billy Whitton - jazz guitar styles and blues fingerpicking

~Konrad Park ‘Stickrad’ – learn more about the unique Chapman Stick, how it is played and listen to a few original compositions

~Dan Sulzberger - Focusing on rhythm, harmony and melodic concepts

~Spike Mason on jazz improvisation. Yep, bring your instrument for this.

Pick up tips at Spike Mason’s jazz improvisation masterclass.

Book tickets at Clarence Jazz Festival.

 Feel the excitement - connect to their FB to know what’s happening daily!

Gardon, Jouhikko, Nyckelharpa, Sape, Bamboo Pipes: World Music Celebration

Rainforest music festival highlights the sounds of cello-beating, hurdy gurdies and mouth organs.

By Michael Switow

SARAWAK, Malaysia — Nestled at the base of Mount Santubong, in a land made famous by the head-hunters, who only decades ago still fought here for honor, a Kenyah elder holds a dagger in his right hand and a hand-carved wooden shield in his left. He moves quickly, genuinely shocking his foe, a bare-chested Maori warrior, who moments earlier was intensely focused on the crowd in front of him.

Bats fly overhead.

Matthew Ngau is an artist and sculptor who rarely leaves his forested Borneo home and Te Hira Paenga is in training to become an Anglican minister, when he's not performing the Hakka and other traditional arts.

Only on the stage of the Rainforest World Music Festival is it likely that these two men would cross weapons. Cross-cultural surprises and jam sessions define this three-day festival, created 12 years ago to introduce Sarawakian musicians to the world and world musicians to Malaysia.

The festival also likely presents the world's best showcase of indigenous instruments.

“I'm looking to excite, amaze, enjoy, have a good time and also educate a little bit,” says artistic director and festival co-founder Randy Raine-Reusch. “This is a voyage of discovery for the audience. I want concert-goers to say `WOW, I've never seen that before!'”

The festival features an eclectic mix of bands including American country & bluegrass, East African drumming, Indonesian gamelan, Portuguese hard rock and Korean shamanistic tunes rarely heard outside traditional ceremonies. But every group has one common trait: each integrates indigenous instruments into its music. Some instruments have exotic names like the sumpoton, a free-reed mouth organ made with a calabash and bamboo pipes by villagers in northeast Borneo, or the hurdy gurdy, a European fiddle popular during the Renaissance which is played not with a bow but by cranking an attached wheel. Others like the Swedish nyckelharpa — an elongated fiddle with sixteen strings and an overlay of wooden pegs to control the pitch — are even more bizarre in appearance.

“These instruments are disappearing and I want that culture to survive,” explains Raine-Reusch, who plays hundreds of instruments as well. “I want to hear what that culture sounded like on the real thing. I'm not interested in hearing Balkan music on an electric guitar. I want to hear authenticity, even if it is in fusion music.”

Raine-Reusche estimates there are more than 5,000 instruments in the world — and that's if you don't count all the bells and rattles. Throw those into the mix and the count tops 10,000. At this year's Rainforest festival, 17 bands performed, yet only six used a guitar, well, seven if you count the one made from bamboo by Kinabalu Merdu Sound. Even fewer had a drum set.

Instead of drums, the Hungarian group Muszikas uses a gardon, an instrument that at first glance appears more suited to a string ensemble. The gardon player sets the tempo by hitting the instrument's strings with a stick. This “cello-beating” technique must have been tiring for traditional Hungarian musicians who earned their living by playing up to 40 hours non-stop at wedding parties.

This is not a festival of purists. Don't be fooled by the instruments. More than 20,000 music-lovers flock to the Sarawak Cultural Village each year for the Rainforest World Music Festival. Teenagers (and the not-so-young) dance for hours, but instead of partying to guitars, bass and drums, the mainstay of most pop bands, they jam to the sounds of the sapé, llimba and jouhikko.

(The sapé is a four-stringed instrument from Borneo whose lyrical melodies belie its cricket bat shape. llimba is an African thumb-piano, traditionally played by herders to mark their distance travelled. Jouhikko is a Finnish word, pronounced “yo-hee-ko”, for horsehair and Europe's oldest bowed instrument. )

“The tunes we are playing were really very cool two to three hundred years ago,” says jouhikko player Pekko Kappi. “We're still kind of shaking a little bit from how much fun we had,” says American musician Jeff Burke of the Jeff & Vida Band. “First of all, it's kind of packed here tonight, so there's a sea of people, in the middle of one of the most pristine areas that we've ever played a concert in. And the crowd here responds to what we do and music in general totally different than an American crowd would.”

Fans weaved a conga line through the crowd and sang along with every chorus, even though the tunes sung by Vida Wakeman in a raspy southern voice were original compositions they had never heard before.

“In the States, there's an etiquette, especially in bluegrass music” Burke explains. “ You sit quietly and listen and even if you love it and it's the best thing you've ever heard, you'll be quiet and when the song is over, you'll clap real loud and then stop really quickly so that the next song can happen, which always seemed nice until now, because it seems much more fun to have a crowd like this who kind of really throws themselves into the experience.”

Editors note: Visit our video section and picture gallery for more pictures and music from the event

World Music Themes at Rainforest World Music Festival 2009

By Mallika Naguran

10 July 2009, Kuching.The sounds of World Music are intriguing backed by quaint strains of faraway bands playing with strange-looking musical instruments. What is more fascinating is the meaning behind the songs. We explore more into some of the stories and emotions that are carried in the songs performed at the 12th Rainforest World Music Festival held at the Sarawak Cultural Village.

Moana & The Tribe from New Zealand.

For Moana & The Tribe, the Kiwis tell us that their songs are about spirituality, the environment and ancestors. “We see ourselves as guardians of the land and culture, the link between ancestors and the future,” says Moana the singer, composer and leader of the 12-piece band.

Her songs reflect the struggles faced by the Maoris.“Songs are a medium of storytelling; and we use songs to tell of the struggles of our tribes being marginalized.” She refers to the colonization of New Zealand were the Maori culture was chipped at and eroded.

A few songs question the state of things. One song, says Moana, urges “the keeping of traditional Maori names of mountains and rivers alive, formally and legally, not just within our people”. She spoke about the British renaming a mountain that was once called Aoraki to Mt Cook. Aoraki is the highest mountain in New Zealand at 3,754m in the Southern Alps.

The Zawose family rehearsing poolside.

The song “Moko” addresses the difference between moko (Maori tattoo) and contemporary tattoo, to drive home the point that there is meaning in every indigenous moko carved on the skin of the Maoris. This is not to be dealt with flippantly or misused.

Vasco from Dazkarieh says his music unravels the differentways people relate to each other. He hopes to take a new approach in forging the relations between people. Some songs are about working in the field, and some religious. The Portuguese band revives songs played well before an oppressive Portugal regime 40 yrs ago that banned ethnic music.

The Zawose Family sings in Kigogo, their native dialect in Tanzania, retaining the old flavours of the African country before Swahili was nationalized as a unifying language. The late Hukwe Zawose composed songs that stirred the hearts of the people in taking pride in their country.

Robert Zawose

“We sing about the land, about nature, about people coming together, about life,” smiles Robert Zawose, then points to the tree. “See as we sing, even birds are coming.”

Even while keeping to age-old rhythm, listeners can appreciate their songs about the sufferings involved in the Hiroshima bombing as well as HIV disease. “Sumbu” is about how a woman feels when her child has lost her way, then is struck with memories of her difficult childbirth.

Akasha's James

Akasha from cosmopolitan Malaysia is a “rojak” instrumental band with skills in world music, classical and Latin Jazz. It becomes more interesting when the players who are ethnically Indians, Chinese and Caucasian playtraditional Malay music like the joget, and more contemporary tunes like blues, funk, jazz and Latin.

Guitarist James thinks music need not always have a story or a meaning. “Music has the effect of bringing out a story within people when they listen to it. It pretty much lies in the eye of the beholder; it's not limited by our own vision of it.”

Photos by Mallika Naguran.

See related articles on Gaia Discovery: Interview with festival director Randy Raine-Reusch on 2009 surprising finds; challenges faced by Sarawak Tourism Board before the opening of the 12th Rainforest World Music Festival.