Part 2:

I must be crazy. The pool at my hotel invites me to indulge and give up another heatseeker of a day in the park. But festivalgoers will say that it's hard work and takes dedication to experience these things- at least it wasn't Glastonbury-mud....
Hadn't heard from Goosebump either- maybe he was soaking up the poolwater himself.

The news is that main act Cesaria Evora is not coming as she had suffered a mild stroke after her gigs in Sydney- she is resting comfortably in hospital, so her band will still be playing but it's an instrumental 'tribute'-set to the diva. Bummer. The Diva On Bare Feet is a sight to behold but who knows, if health prevails she may be back one day.

Mid day at the oasis and New Zealand's answer to Crowded House, Don McGlashan & The Seven Sisters burn up the big stage in front of two dancing women with umbrellas and folk crammed under the little bits of shade under the two oak trees on the side. It's not the most grateful nor graceful of starts but the band works itself admirably though their set and the heat.
Speakers' Corner boasts the appearance of Black Armbanders Shane Howard and Kutcha Edwards. It's funny, you go to a world music festival to pick up something about cultures and here's the culture right on your doorstep; where Toumani Diabate talks about a lineage dating back 71 generations to approximately the year 1300, the Aboriginal stories can be dated back over 40.000 years!
Not that Howard and Edwards are that ancient, they represent the modern day aboriginal- with Shane being a 'whitefella' who personally journeyed within the culture and stories the tribes told and took a major interest in them. The concert last night was very interesting so I wanted to know more.
After lengthy introductions to the careers of both men (Edwards has been active in several seminal (Aboriginal) rockbands in the 70s and 80s) it's left to both men to explain about the history of the band and their people. It comes down to an enormous amount of tradition being ripped from its fabric by colonists, zealots, bureaucrats and government officials (there's a whole lot of truth in the statement from Kutcha when he says that it's incredible that the oppressing mass of new migrants declared that a new law was set in place wiping out an ancient law that had governed the land for many centuries and that Aborigines had to submit to that law without their approval). As much as you get information about the bands' origin, the background of protest laid bare in many of the songs and the art of songwriting Aboriginal style, it's a quite unexpected moment that drives the point home; during last nights' performance Kutcha dedicates the gripping song Why Do You Treat Me So Bad? to a friend; unbeknownst to him the man is in the audience and after the gig gets backstage to meet up with Edwards. When he thanks the big man for the dedication, exclaiming: "I really needed that", Kutcha bursts out in tears on the stage. Suddenly you understand a bit about the big connection all these people have with each other- the struggles, the hardship of so many years under foreign government but most of all the respect they have for each other through the connection with their ancestry and history going back for so many years.

The Zoo Stage (that's stage 4) hosts a blues artist under the name Mojo Webb. It's almost something out of the Blues Brothers of Spinal Tap but yeah, there's a white guy in a black suit playing Damn Right I Got The Blues in 40-degree heat!
That really gives me the blues so I pick up the action at the main stage where the darlings of the Australian yoof surf culture Beautiful Girls perform. Heaps of teenage hippies dance to the slick blend of rock, dubreggae and pop the band serve up. Just like John Butler Trio and Sarah Blasko these three acts form the main drawcard for the young festivalgoers and it's not difficult to see why- they are accomplished acts who represent Austrlian popular culture quite well. Some of the elder people complain that these bands don't belong on a festival like this but then again- many of the presented world music acts are like rock stars in their own country- all in the eye of the beholder, n'est-ce pas?

Titi Robin represents the 'rocking' culture of the Breton gypsy as his travels through the world made him embrace the wide European, Asian and especially Arabian cultures. His quintet with accordeonist, percussionist, bass player and (Spanish) vocalist almost conjure up images of Blackmore's Night- Titi looks quite a bit like Ritchie and the acoustic strummings of his beautiful bouzouk and oud hark back to the medieval ages. The rhythms are multifold and this is a real folkloristic performance- waltzes, 9/8-rhythms to bog-standard 4/4s- it's as tight as a gnats' ass. Robin is a masterful guitarist who duels freely with the accordeonist and the (young) percussionist and the set almost feels like an impromptu jamsession. Great, great stuff.

Late in the afternoon and while the shades get longer (a bit) so does the appetite for something different. With four stages open for business I stroll first to the main stage where Terem Quartet from Russia entertain the crowd with a set filled with accordeon, two lutes and a monstrous bass balalaika- the band play a gutwrenching version of the Mission Impossible-theme, so i decide to check out another stage- Egyptian/Australian Joseph Tawadros and his two merry men are trying to recreate the zonking hot streets of Cairo via oud, bass and percussion- the oud takes an age to tune properly as the heat really plays havoc with the strings- fortunately, Tawadros posesses a nice black sense of humour and the gig proceeds in a quite pleasant fashion without catching any fire.

OK, where is that damn Goosebump? Shot off a SMS...no reply as yet.

Armed with a slice of pizza I take in the gig of Beirut. I quite like his Flying Cup Club-album and I wonder how he would pull of a gig at a festival of this magnitude. He's at one of the side stages and he and his (8-odd) crew are like a gawkish teenage mob trying to impress the ladies. It sounds all good, folksy-whimsical pop with a distinct Eastern-European flavour attached to it but it's a bit lightweight- it kinda profiles the glockenspiel vs. timpani-dilemma many bands face as they'd like to play more uptempo-stuff to play up to the crowd but Beirut's charm is in the understated way Zach Condon manufactures the many veils his folksongs wear. It would be bearable if the main man would have a slightly larger dose of charisma at his disposal but no such luck. Not in the mood today, I'm afraid.
No, then Clube Do Balancao who ram the message home to the adoring sweating fans in front of stage 2- their samba-rock quenches the thirst perfectly for rhythms- the complete antithesis of what I just watched.

The evening program starts with Susana Baca, an enchanting yet powerful singer whose traditional Peruvian roots have traversed all the way to Cuba and Brazil. She draws in the crowd with her big brown eyes and dazzling performance- she really is an entertainer with a poetic soul. The band gives her all the breathing space and room to dance- she wins the crowd with a not always easy blend of music to get into but, like Yasmin Levy last year, she teaches the large crowd to listen.

Traditionally Celtic artists always have an enormous appeal because of the infectious nature of their music- fiddler Martin Hayes and (American) guitarist Dennis Cahill represent that side of the world with flair. Seated on small stools close to another the two bring their medleys of reels, jigs, ballads, marches and so forth with enormous gusto- so much that because of the frantic foottapping of Hayes the microphone stands of the duo almost wander off the stage. The crowd lie back like lazy lions in the languid early evening sun in the Kalahari desert- the pair don't mind the atmosphere as they surely would have other crowds up the tables dancing and don't mind a new experience. at times I fear for Cahill's safety as he sits so close to the fiddler and it'll only take one passionate stroke of Hayes' bow to poke out an eye....

Well, blow me down, a phonecall from Mr. Goosebump! His Lordship is in the beertent! The jolly-up is finally getting started....

After I sneak a signature on the Hayes/Cahill-CD I rock up to the beertent to meet the Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter-one-man appreciation society. So what's he like? Awfully nice dude, ale-drinker, certainly gifted with a grand love of music and the ability to wax poetical about it. Incredibly enough he lives in the same street in the same suburb I lived two years ago when I moved to Sydney!

After dissecting these boards here we've come to the discovery that we missed John Butler Trio's huge performance on stage 2, drawing a huge crowd that virtually blocks all access to the stages behind it and the Toumani Diabate Symmatric Orchestra-performance rocks the night and thousands of enthousiastic spectators; we settle on a few more beers and discussion about this joint. We manage to scooch off and get a signature from Toumani on one of his CDs- the Symmetric Orchestra-release Boulaverd de L'Independence makes a welcome entry in goosebump's life whereas I have my Mande-Variations album signed. Only here....

So with the night still sweltering after a great day of music and banter I head off to the hotel- so what would this Space Is Deep-character be like?