The Rainforest World Music Festival

                        Every year thousands of strangers gather in the rainforest of Borneo dance in the mud and tropical rain to music play by musicians from all over the world. Taking place at the Sarawak Cultural Village, the event serves the audience with traditional, folk, and fusion music from both local and international performers bringing the hardly heard music.

It has been described as Asia’s best kept secret, the land of famous white Rajahs, hornbills and orang utans, it’s a place for history, mystery, romance and exotic adventures. 

The Rainforest Music Festival is one of the largest music festivals in Southeast Asia, is an exciting culmination of culture, workshops, and live entertainment held every year just at Santubong in Kuching, Malaysia. People coming from every part of the world attended the three days festival to experience music and traditional instruments from nearly every continent.

The RMWF is also one of the biggest musical events in Malaysia, crowd puller contributing to tourism draw to Sarawak. The festival has been voted for the 5th consecutive year in 2014, as one of the 25 best International Festivals by renowned world music magazine, Songlines and stands among other renowned festivals like WOMAD Australia and New Zealand, Ulsan World Music Festival, South Korea and Kriol Jazz Festival, Cape Verde among others. 

Me and Tourism Malaysia with Kiwi musician

Main stage

This year, the opening night was held on the 19th of June and marks the beginning of the three days festival. The dinner for the opening night was serves at the beach, started at 7.30pm and attended by all the performers and media as well as the Sarawak Tourism Board members. 

It’s a good idea and thankfully the weather was on our side, the place looks magnificent at night with the stars decorating the night sky.

Performers and Media together with Sarawak Tourism Board as well as Tourism Malaysia gathered at welcome dinner 

 

a talented local born

The event is set wonderfully between a white sandy beach and a rain-forest mountain peak in Sarawak,  In the grounds of the Sarawak Cultural Village, the two stages are nested among trees at the foot of the legendary Mount Santubong, and throughout the village screens are up so everyone has great views no matter where they are.

Zapin by Johor

For three nights, musicians performs and play beautiful music, mostly using the traditional instruments, while the audience listened intently, move and clapped to the beats. On the second night (Saturday) the event received bigger crowd, fans flooding in front of the 2 stages, the surrounding showered with rhythm, laughter and joy, people are dancing and some event jumping around celebrating. 

Fans listened intently

Three new elements have been injected to add the freshness into the festival. The Malay House was used for the first time, giving the workshop there an intimate feel. It was limited, however, to fifty persons for health and safety reasons. In the comfort of the Theatre, two daily chamber-styled concerts were presented instead. 

To keep the festival mood going by another hour, there was the RWMF community drum circle  conducted by 1DRUM.ORG. It was a time for the audience to beat their beat their socks off for one hour from 5.00 – 6.00 pm daily as they took turns trying their hand on the traditional drums in front of the Jungle stage.

 The best part of this event, the musicians allows to mingled with the fans especially during workshops. Every morning and during supper, performers, media and tourism members sit and enjoy the meal together. The last night of the event, most of stay late after supper, taking pictures chit chat and wishing each other best journey a head.