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

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. Staged on the last weekend of August in both 1998 and 1999, the Festival has essentially coincided with Malaysia's National Day celebrations. As of September 1999, plans were already underway for a third production. Dr. James Masing, Sarawak's Minister for Tourism and Patron of the first two events, intends to make the Rainforest World Music Festival 2000 the biggest, most exciting yet.

For those unfamiliar with the venue, the Sarawak Cultural Village (SCV), is a State-run "living museum" situated on a plot of land flanked by rainforested slopes on one side, and the Damai Beach Resort on the other. It takes about 45 minutes to reach the SCV by road from Kuching. Like Taman Mini Indonesia Indah in Jakarta, and similar institutions that have sprung up elsewhere in Southeast Asia over the past two decades, the SCV consists of replicas of houses of the most prominent ethnic groups of the region. By visiting the various houses, guests have the opportunity to interact with representatives (or interpreters) of Sarawak's diverse population, and gain a sense of the lifestyle that is, or at one time was, characteristic of each community.

Most of the SCV houses and larger stages were used at some point during the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) for special activities. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, the houses provided intimate settings for interactive workshops where individual musicians could talk about their practices, as well as experiment with new sounds by combining in ensemble with other RWMF participants. Such workshops were among the unique features of the RWMF, when compared with similar festivals worldwide. In the evenings, formal concert performances started around 7 pm on the larger SCV stages, and continued until nearly midnight. At the close of both the 1998 and 1999 RWMFs, all participants convened on stage to revel in a musical amalgam, sonically symbolic of the "kerja sama" of the diverse cultures and communities embraced by the event.

Although numerous groups and individuals were acknowledged in the 1998 and 1999 RWMF program booklets, the Ministry of Tourism, working primarily through the Sarawak Tourism Board, has been the propelling force behind the Festival. With a committee comprised of representatives from several governmental and non-governmental organizations, the Sarawak Tourism Board has ultimately been responsible for the selection and administration of the Festival performers. The local organizing committee for the RWMF 1998 included 1) the Sarawak Tourism Board, 2) the Sarawak Atelier Society, 3) Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), 4) the Office of Custom and Tradition (Majlis Adat Istiadat), 5) the Ministry of Social Development (Kementerian Pembangunan Sosial), and 6) the Sarawak Music Society. The 1999 Festival was created by essentially the same committee, except the Office of Custom and Tradition, which was not involved the second year. A critical non-Sarawakian member of the organizing committee for both the 1998 and 1 999 Festivals has been Randy Raine-Reusch, a professional composer, performer, producer, and world music consultant based in Vancouver, Canada.

Performers at the RWMF 1998 and 1999 can be grouped into three general categories: Sarawakians, other Malaysians, and international artists. The first staging of the RWMF included nineteen groups. Eleven of these were from Sarawak, four were from other parts of Malaysia, and the remaining four were from the UK, Australia, the Philippines, and Canada. Representing Sarawak were various popular and "traditional" artists from Kuching, UNIMAS in Kota Semarahan, Damai, Sibu, Belaga, and Mukah. (NOTE: "Traditional musics" here generally embraces those forms that were not originally developed with the intention of being marketed to a broad public or disseminated through the mass media, but were pitched to local audiences, and often performed in particular social or spiritual circumstances.) The Kuching contingent included the Bidayuh Community Cultural Ensemble, offering a music-theatrical presentation based on a Lundu Bidayuh legend, the Ethnic Orchestra of the Dayak Cultural Foundation, which combined an array of l ocal instruments in ensemble as an educational tool for Sarawak's youth, and Kumpulan Gendang Melayu Ash, a group of Malay women singing to the accompaniment of their own frame drums. Performing in the "pop" vein was Safar Ghaffar, a Kuching-based musician and dancer originally from Kalimantan Barat. Ensembles from the university included the UNIMAS Gamelan and the Electro-Acoustic Group UNIMAS, performing traditional and experimental music, respectively. Tuku' Kame', a Damai-based band comprised of Sarawak Cultural Village employees, served up a sampler of original popular music based on Sarawakian traditions. Similarly, Andrewson Ngalai, a well-known singer from Sibu, delivered his distinct style of Iban pop. Two groups came from the Belaga District. One of these, named "Voice of the Usun Apau" for this occasion, consisted of four Penan men from Long Wat, Long Singu, and Long Malim. Three of these artists played sape' and provided supporting voices for the fourth musician, who focused on sinui singing. The second group from Belaga, billed as "Saps' Ulu," was the phenomenal Kenyah Badeng sampe' duo of Asang Lawai and Tegit Usat from Long Geng (now Uma' Badeng, Sungai Koyan). The final Sarawakian group in the RWMF 1998, the Badan Budaya Melanau from Mukah, presented selections from Melanau recreational music and dance traditions.

Most of the groups from Semenanjung and beyond performed self-consciously constructed popular music hybrids of assorted flavors. The BM Boys from Penang blended Malay and Chinese traditions into a new pop style, while the (primarily) Kuala Lumpur-rooted group, Anak Dayung, combined the Orang Ash (Temuan) vocals of Mak Minah Anggong with an assortment of acoustic and electric sounds. 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. 17). Adding an international hue to the RWMF line-up were Lammas from the UK, a group performing what might best be characterized as "Celtic jazz"; B'tutta from Australia, airing a potpourri of percussive sounds drawn from across the globe; Joey Ayala, whose band melded Philippine and transnational rock styles; and Asza, a Canada-based acoustic quartet incorporating sounds of more than fifty instruments to yield an eclectic "world music" fusion.

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. Of thirteen showcased ensembles, four were from Sarawak, four were from Sabah and peninsular Malaysia, and five were from points abroad. Aside from comprising fewer performers, Sarawak's festival presence experienced a change in character between 1998 and 1999. Where traditional music/dance forms were prominent in the first Festival, they were virtually eliminated from the second. In 1999, Sarawak made its mark primarly through hybrid bands, intentionally constructed from local, traditional music resources, and backed by influential agencies or organizations. Two of the three bands were government sponsored: Tuku' Kame' of the Sarawak Cultural Village (ultimately under the Minstry of Tourism), and MITRA ("Muzik TRAdisional"), an ensemble of employees from the Ministry of Social Development. The third band, Sayu Ateng, w as cultivated by the Ibraco House development company. Each of these groups aimed to project an all-inclusive musical image of Sarawak by weaving numerous Sarawakian traditions into a a single, novel fabric. Almost in anomalous contrast, the fourth group, Kuching-based Kenyah sampe' duo of Uchau Bilong and Mathew Ngau Jau played traditional dance tunes familiar to upriver peoples.

Representing other regions of Malaysia were Seni Kinabalu from Sabah, Akar Umbi and Kumpulan Ghazal from Kuala Lumpur, and the Dama Orchestra, which tapped musicians from various states of the peninsula. In folding Sabahan traditions into a unified artistic expression, Seni Kinabalu matched the Sarawakian bands in principle and intent. Akar Umbi, an Orang Ash (Temuan)/Malaysian-pop fusion band from Kuala Lumpur, was in part a return act, since several of its most charismatic members, including Orang Asli singer Mak Minah Anggong, performed at the RWMF 1998 with the pop group Anak Dayung. The Kumpulan Ohazal, like the sampe' duo from Sarawak, consisted entirely of traditional musicians, here performing traditional music of the Malay community. Similarly, The Dama Orchestra was comprised of traditional musicians from Malaysia's Chinese population. The music of this ensemble, however, embraced Western popular tunes from the 1930s-60s and Chinese pop songs, rendered on a combination of western and Chinese traditi onal instruments. Performing and perpetuating a kind of "world music" from an earlier era, The Dama Orchestra was an intriguing addition to the RWMF 1999.

International artists appearing at RWMF 1999 came from Cuba, Peru, Canada/China, Madagascar, and Scotland. Alma Latina, an acoustic quartet of violin, guitar, voice, and percussion, performed traditional Cuban and Latin-American dance music, while Mochica del Peru, another acoustic quartet of string, wind, and percussion instruments, delivered an array of Andean sounds. Randy Raine-Reusch, who played with Asza in the 1998 production, and was the consultant for both Festivals, appeared in 1999 with Han Mei, a Chinese zheng (plucked zither) virtuoso. Both performing on zheng, Raine-Reusch and Han exploited the expressive capacity of this ancient instrument in a set of re-worked traditional tunes and the duo's own compositions. With eyes closed, Regis Gizavo, a singer and accordionist from Madagascar, lost track of time and place as he melted into his instrument, singing spiritual Malagasy songs, stylistically reminiscent of bluesy Cajun zydeco. Capping the RWMF 1999 events were the driving sounds of Shooglenift y, a band fusing fiddle, mandolin, banjo, bass, and guitar into a Scottishflavored pop dancehall blend. Indeed, the audience could not help but congregate on the grassy area in front of the stage and groove to the music at midnight-despite the rain.

Pleased with the outcome of the first RWMF, and encouraged by smoother operation and increased attendance at the second Festival, the Sarawak Ministry of Tourism plans to repeat and further refine the event in the year 2000. Directions in which members of the Sarawak Tourism Board and organizing committee would like to develop the Festival include amplification of the rainforest theme, intensification of the spotlight on Asian artists, and establishment of the RWMF as a platform for new Sarawakian groups to gain recognition and access to the global music industry. Viewing the rainforest as a unique feature of Sarawak, as well as one of the state's principal tourist draws, the Tourism Board sees an advantage in promoting the Festival as an arena for performers coming from regions where there remain substantial tracts of rainforest. Toward this end, the Board's marketing manager hopes to re-distribute and re-proportion the performing groups such that the three categories--Malaysia (including Sarawak), Asia, and the rest of the world (especially South America and Africa)-receive equal billing at the RWMF. If this plan is implemented, two-thirds of the music groups, then, would be Asia-connected. It is also significant that some Festival organizers have indicated an inclination to erase "traditional" musics, especially those from Sarawak, from the program. Advocates of such a plan contend that the RWMF should not be a "folklore festival" or "culture show." Rather, it should be a stepping stone for innovative ensembles creating new sounds and genres from traditional (Sarawakian) sources, thus implying that this is what constitutes true "world music." Ideas differ, however, on this issue and on the other programmatic matters mentioned here. The Rainforest World Music Festival in Kuching, Sarawak is indeed an ambitious and exciting undertaking that continues to unfold, and promises unparalleled experiences for researchers, tourists, musicians, and music-lovers alike.