Festival-goers learning how to do Tanzanian dance from a Jagwa Music member.
KUCHING: The Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) is not only about night performances, it is also about workshops where different cultures and music knowledge are shared with festival-goers.
The second day of RWMF had nine workshops running concurrently at three locations at Sarawak Cultural Village: Dewan Lagenda, Iban Longhouse and Malay House.
In ‘So the Rivers Continue to Flow’, local musicians Peter Sawal from Bisaya Gong Orchestra, Matthew Ngau Jau from Lan E’ Tuyang, Roy Kulleh from Nading Rhapsody and Narawi Rashid from Gema Seribu talked about preserving their music heritage.
‘Chehera Chitra’ workshop attendees concentrating on learning how to make tribal handicraft of Kerala.
All the local performers are doing their best in preserving their music heritage through teaching the young ones. Festivals-goers also had a taste of Tanzanian dancing with a workshop led by a group called Jagwa Music.
The ‘Ruka Na Jagwa’ workshop was an interactive dance workshop led by Deborah Dickson Chambo, Mzee Rashidi Mbaraka and Kazimoto Jackson Aluta of Jagwa Music from Tanzania.
The workshops also gave a chance for RWMF performers to come together from different countries to join together and perform a series of short performances and demonstrations.
Face painting demonstration from the Karinthalakootham group of India.
An example was Beat Boxes, which was a workshop on percussion instruments. In this workshop, percussionists from Blackbeard’s Tea Party (England), Son Yambu (Cuba), Jagwa Music (Tanzania), Yayasan Warisan Johor and Gema Seribu (Malaysia), Ryuz (Japan) and Kharinthalakootham (India) jammed together with their percussion instruments.
Seven bands came together for the ‘Different Strokes for Different Folks’ to brief the attendees the many styles and techniques of playing bowed string instruments.
Among the instruments demonstrated during this workshop were the fiddle and violin from the Western culture, ‘rebab’ from the Malay culture, ‘gaohu’ and ‘erhu’ from the Chinese culture.
Other workshops were Foot Stomp, a workshop on interactive demonstration and lesson on clogging, The Voice (a workshop on Beautiful Vocals), Knock on Wood (an exploration on the Txalaparta of the Basque region), ‘Awok Awok’ (an interactive workshop in the body movements of the Malaysian Dikir Barat and Chehera Chitra), face painting rituals and tribal handicraft making of Kerala.
Peter Sawal (left) and Matthew Ngau Jau talking about preserving their music heritage.
Gordie Mackeeman from Gordie Mackeeman & His Rhythm Boys, Canada, demonstrating how to play the fiddle.