Coming full circle...Darwin Festival 2010

Darwin, 14 August Thirty one years since its inception, the Darwin Festival then entitled the Bougainvillea Festival has come full circle.

As can be expected, Darwin Festival 2010 will deliver a diverse program of events incorporating all genres for an August calendar culturally enriched by a multi-arts program that will appeal to a cross section of Darwin Festival’s ever supportive audience.  

However, the distinction this year according to Artistic Director Jo Duffy is that the Festival has returned to the people. “Thirty-one years ago this was a festival for the people of Darwin, and now thirty-one years on Darwin’s local artists and art makers have developed to such a high standard, nationally and internationally, that the festival has now returned to them”, says Jo Duffy.

GL Lead Female Dancer Tara Robertson with Geese

Of the seventy-five different events appearing at this year’s festival forty-seven incorporate local artists and performers.  “In terms of programming the festival, we have on offer a plethora of quality performances in all art forms coming from within the NT cultural community. Coupled up with the fact there is a strong and enthusiastic audience who want to see stories from the NT on stage. I’m extremely pleased to be in the role of Artistic Director at this stage of the Festival’s life”, explains Jo, “The community spirit is remarkable”. 

Along side locals will be performances from Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Korea, France, India and of course from down south. Big names John Butler Trio, The Cat Empire, Tex Perkins and Tim Freedman to name a few will visit the Top End to strut their stuff.

The much loved [free] Santos Opening Concert held at The Amphitheatre will feature the 2008 sell-out sensation Liberty Songs, Emma Donovan and Dunganda Street Sounds who also can lay claim to this year’s Darwin Festival theme song.  AFL star Russell Robertson and guitarist Phil Cebrano make an appearance.

Igniting The Lighthouse, Tim Freedman will perform with Redfern rocker Perry Keyes, and later in the night local funksters Barry Brown and the GetDown will undoubtedly bring the house down.

Brown’s Mart Theatre will be delivering an even greater number of theatrical performances.   As usual Artistic Director Jo Duffy is committed to providing an intelligent level of engaging performance for children as much as for adults. One of the theatrical highlights for children [and adults] is The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik - Winner “Outstanding Solo Show” – 2009 New York Int’l Fringe [pg 12] and from Korea an emotionally compelling piece entitled When His Watch Stopped [pg 22].  After Hours at the Dinosaurs’ Museum [pg 24] is a must for all families, the mystery of behind the scenes after dark will be revealed to kids and the show will capture old and young alike.

Those seeking a good dose of immune boosting laughter will be pleased to know that former ROVE and The Glass House favourite Corinne Grant will perform early on in the Festival whilst  Peter Helliar the veteran of live comedy will visit and perform his laidback, outrageously effortless comedy in the final festival week. 

Wrong skin

The stellar highlights this year are too many to write here. However, for the growing base of opera lovers is one performance only of the La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini (sung in English). For those with a penchant for dance is the highly anticipated Goose Lagoon, Wrong Skin and from Indonesia a stunning and highly acclaimed piece from contemporary dance company Nan Jombang [pg 36]. We urge you to take the program to the hammock and get to know it intimately. From David Helfgott, Belle du Berry and David Lewis [FR], Christa & Dick Hughes the father and daughter honky tonk cabaret team are sure to set tongues wagging as Christa a former lead in Machine Gun Fellatio verges on vulgar as her charming father elegantly tinkers on the piano, Five Elements incorporates traditional musicians from India with Australian Jazz greats. From quirky, intriguing shows such as Sideshow Superstars, The Tent, Head Full of Love and a live radio play performed by Mr Delvin Pinkus and the New Time Radio Orchestra, the program keeps on keeping on for all 18 days and nights. Darwin based photographer Glenn Campbell presents his second photographic exhibition entitled SHRINE, and all this along the visual arts component of the program and a collection of play-readings will keep everyone busy day and night. 

With a firm eye on providing a high level of cultural entertainment for all ages in the community Jo Duffy has put together a number of performances to capture youth attention. Silent Disco is back and a new concept pitched as a pedestrian-based event using iPods, mobile phones and the Darwin CBD / Waterfront En Route [pg 23] is presented by Melbourne and Darwin artists and is sure to provide you with an intriguing and unpredictable encounter with your city.

The Festival opens with a Welcome to Country by the Larrakia people and so it closes. But this time, [and for the first time] the highly regarded director Rhoda Roberts presents a new dance work entitled BodymARKS thanks to corporate citizens ConocoPhillips who present the [free] closing night event titled Wanga Mirak. This year the event is held on Mindil Beach. With the setting sun as the backdrop this ceremonial dance performance on a natural sandy dance ground is the perfect way to conclude this year’s Darwin Festival. 

Darwin Festival will be held between August 12 – 29th 2010. For further information please visit

darwinfestival.org.au

MEDIA ENQUIRES TO:

CHRYSS CARR

0417 800 869

aum@aum.net.au

chryss@darwinfestival.org.au

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