RWMF- FLAGSHIP OF TOURISM

Directing the music lineup a second year running, RWMF consultant-founder, Randy Raine-Reusch, came up with a dream list of musicians for this year’s Festival.Despite the global economic downturn and the threat of Influenza A(H1N1), the Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) had remained steadfast in ensuring that the show must go on this year.

Pooling together some of the biggest and most respected names in the world music industry, this year’s inventory included bands that had been performing together for over 20 years.

“The Hungarian group, Muszikas are a walking encyclopaedia of culture — they’ve travelled to isolated rural villages and catalogued all the local folk songs.

“As such, they are big names in the Hungarian folk movement, so much so that other artistes like the Polish group, The St Nicolas Orchestra, were excited to see them,” Raine-Reusch said, listing names of other bands that have been pre-eminent in the world music scene like the Chilean group, Inti-Illimani.

“A musician from the Finnish group, Jourhiorkesteri, was saying he saw this group performing 30 years ago, and he got so inspired that he compiled a book on Finland’s ethnic music and now that he’s here at the Festival, he gets to meet the band that started it all for him,” he added.

There have been many ‘full-circle’ moments for Raine-Reusch and the musicians. From the New Zealand Maori group, Moana and the Tribe, he got to see an instrument he commissioned for a museum in Arizona that in the end, couldn’t be accepted because it was made of whale bone.

“After that, I got a wooden one made in its place and the whale bone went to another musician in New Zealand. I’d never gotten to see it until Horomona, the band’s taonga puoro (traditional Maori instruments) specialist came to me with a big smile on his face and said, “Here, this is what you commissioned.”

On the Zawose Family, a group of musicians from the rural outskirts of Tanzania (it takes them three days to travel to the airport), Raine-Reusch spoke of how they were at first shy, nervous and reclusive when they came, expecting to be one of the few African faces in a sea of Caucasian foreigners.

“After a while though, they started feeling comfortable, smiling and hugging people at the Festival. They said they didn’t feel isolated and the atmosphere was just like being home among their own African kinsmen. And that’s the whole point of the show — it’s supposed to bring people together.”

And Sarawakian hospitality seems to be the magic elixir for creating this unifying Festival.

According to Rose Au, a liaison officer volunteering at RWMF, the visiting musicians were always surprised to find that the liaison officers and the schleppers who transported their instruments to and fro, took time out to work at the Festival for free.

“We offer them something I don’t think festivals in other countries would offer — we pick them up from the airport, bring them to the hotel, and take them around town all on our own initiative. Do you think they’d get that anywhere else?”

For liaison officers, Aline Jee and Peggy Wong, who have been volunteering since 2004, the Festival offers its own rewards they can’t get anywhere else.

According to Jee, the inter-cultural elements never cease to impress her.

“It’s amazing how things can be so different overseas with different lifestyles, and yet everyone is united at the Festival with music as the common and easily understood language.”

The universal language of music was what impressed Wong in 2002 when she first attended the Festival.

Though she was placed on Gate Control in 2004, she was eventually asked to help liaise with individual performing groups — a request that would lead her to recruit other like-minded volunteers.

Over time, the RWMF became a reunion for all the volunteers and LOs — people who shared the same passion for this Festival and the continuation of that universal language that touched them from the first time they encountered it, she added.

According to first-timer Tom McLaughlin, a writer for the Washington DC-based TheTentacle.com who has been to Woodstock and attended rock concerts the world over, “something unique blossomed and then fruited. Music that takes your mind and threads it around trees, up into the canopy and bursts out into the sunshine like flights of colourful tropical birds.”

Be that as it may, Jee opined that the event may have become too commercialised this year.

“There were too many purple booths built at the location which blocked the once very nice view of the various longhouses of the different tribes,” she noted.

For Colin Wei, the RWMF sound engineer, the FnB tents posted outside the Iban longhouse detracted from what had been a calm and tranquil view of the lakeside and the traditional houses across from it.

“It’s also a bit too commercial this year and the festival shouldn’t be that way.”

Working at the Festival for the fourth year in a row, he observed it was a little bit toned down compared to last year with fewer people participating.

However, he agreed the selection of musicians was better this year and there was a good balance of everything from traditional, fusion and electronica.

According to Donald Tan, the feel was still there despite the A(H1N1) scare, although he did observe the turnout on Friday night could have been better.

“There seemed to be a void in the middle between the crowd sitting at the back and those standing in the front,” he noted, lending some weight to earlier speculation that numbers would be significantly decreased this year.

To him, however, the smaller crowd didn’t directly translate to people being scared of the pandemic but that only those who really enjoyed the true Festival feel would be interested in showing up.

While many locals said the ticket prices had prevented them from attending, Tan, comparing the prices to those of other international concerts, noted there were people who willingly paid RM250 to attend a Bon Jovi concert.

“At the RWMF, you’re only paying a fraction of that to have world class bands entertain you.”

Paula Chang said the Festival now had more tourist-targetted food outlets, entertainment and ticket prices.

“It is mostly like a foreigner’s festival. When it first began, there were more locals attending because the price was right and local performers were still given equal exposure. So the locals were there with their children and grandparents, making the Festival more Sarawakian,” she added.

Regarding raised ticket prices, RWMF Benedict Jimbau explained at the cost of at least RM300,000 to fly in, say, five people from each international act (minus excess baggage for instruments), the ticket prices were comparatively cheaper than other music festivals.

“Much as we would have liked to keep prices down, they had gone up like hotel rates and costs of auxiliary things such the construction involved in staging the Festival.

“To recover costs, we have been looking for more sponsorships, and so far, we haven’t increased the ticket price,” he said, adding that they hoped to maintain current ticket prices of RM90 in the future.

Preventative medical measures like dispensing disposable masks and advisory pamphlets, moreover, have unexpectedly increased the cost of organising the Festival. Costing about RM2.5 million to run this year, the Festival, according to Benedict, has earned a conservative estimate of RM2,000 per pax.

The numbers of festival-goers had dropped only slightly this year, with a final audit of 20,260 people compared to last year’s 22,000. Besides the extra costs, the RWMF had to contend with a new element — a new site and stage that had just been completed.

“With a few days left before the official handover, one hour of rain turned the seating terrace into water catchments and large pools of water collected at the site that was redesigned with new drainage,” technical director Niall Macaulay said, explaining they had to resort to digging troughs to increase drainage and lay down extra turf in the standing area to prevent festival goers from sinking into the mud and twisting their ankles.

While they had to improve the new drainage system and lay boards over a completed seating terrace that turned into fish ponds on a day with heavy rain, they also had to work with a new stage that did not work for concert crew or performers alike.

“With the old stage, all we had to do was come in and set up. We had big problems setting up this year because the new stage did not meet our technical requirements,” he said, elaborating on how the new design didn’t factor in the damage a concrete stage could do to dancers’ feet.

“Dancers could fracture their feet stomping and dancing on a concrete surface, effectively ending their careers.”

Macaulay added that the entire surface had to be reconstructed with steel and plywood to produce a flat area for performers and production facilities.

The metal roof, moreover, had produced its own set of problems that needed amending like weatherproofing.

For those who noticed that the sound quality was lacking this year, Macaulay explained the roof did not protect the stage from rain as it was too high and not actually extending to the front of the stage.

“As a result, water seeped into the equipment several times, leading to technical problems during the show, including many loud crackling and banging noises as water found its way into the microphone connections.”

Weatherproofing the stage alone wouldn’t have completely solved the problem presented by a metal roof without sound-proofing.

“When it’s sunny, the heat on the metal roof turns it into a thermal oven. When it rains, you get that pitter-patter on a metal roof that’ll drown out your musicians. What’s more, without sound-proofing, the metal roof is an acoustic nightmare. When the acoustics hit a certain volume, the whole roof starts to vibrate … I’d never heard anything like that before!”

Even though they arrived to prepare the stage three weeks earlier, efforts to make it weather-proof and functional delayed production by two days as they had to create a stage within a stage for the performers and facilities.

Besides, without basic power outlets on the stage, the crew were up until 5am doing the lights.

“We worked four times as much just to get to where we started last year,” Macaulay said, but after the Festival got underway, they were finally able to enjoy its true spirit.

Only days after RWMF ended, Raine-Reusch is already attending meetings on creating yet another music-driven attraction for Sarawak: The Gong Festival.

The enquiry came after Sarawak Museum Department’s recent inaugural Sarawak Gong Festival in Miri — an event that impressed the Tourism Ministry enough to make the event a larger affair.

“We’re still forming a committee to look into creating the Gong Festival with an international conference attached — the idea is to have it in connection with the RWMF,” he said.

Ethnomusicologists and experts on ethnic music will be invited to attend the conference to promote research and education of the traditional instruments known and used the world over.

“Every major university in the US has a Gamelan and Kulintangan section included in its music department,” Raine-Reusch said.

In Sarawak, he is puzzled why locals don’t see the value in pursuing their own ethnic music.

“It’s hard to find local groups — people here don’t think it’s the way to go but Tuku Kame is getting more attention in Kuala Lumpur now after they won the Worldstars Road to Hollywood Competition, and right now, they’re in Hollywood to compete in the World Championship of Perfoming Artists (Wcopa).”

Raine-Reusch cites Kan’id, the young Orang Ulu group from RWMF 2008, as a great example of where local ethnic-inspired bands can go.

“Even though the sound was raw and they needed to gain better musicianship, the idea was excellent,” he said, adding that Sarawak provided really fertile soil to do musically-inclined projects.

“As a person from overseas, I can see the opportunities more clearly. For aspiring musicians, you need to surf the Internet to see what’s successful and start it.”

With so many world music festivals around the world and increased Internet access, the effort to get to that world level should take about five years of hard work.

“When you get good enough, all you need to do is mail them a package, burn a CD or post your band video on youtube and direct the festival organiser to your website. If you’re not good enough, then get better,” he said, adding that festival organisers would also be looking out for new talents.

He himself goes online for prospective bands and talents to feature in the next festival.

As for next year’s RWMF music lineup, Raine-Reusch said he knew who he’d like to invite but was keeping mum about it. So until next year, that’s anybody’s guess.