Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Lotus Festival
The Lotus World Music Festival (http://www.lotusfest.org/festival.html) is, to my mind, one of the things that makes this town special. I love it!
I've been able to see so many amazing and interesting performers. Lila Downs. Hedningarna. Les Yeux Noirs. Tracey Grammer. The Wrigley Sisters. Kanenhi:io Singers. The Senegal American Project. Odette. Oh, the Italian bluegrass group - Red Wine or something like that. Oh, woe....There are so many truly great folks I'm forgetting!
I've learned how much I really, really like Nordic fusion and certain styles of drumming and gypsy klezmer music, and how much I don't particularly care for Italian trance music (or at least not the way it was performed by a certain group last year).
The magical thing about Lotus is that it often doesn't really matter who's performing or even how much you like or don't like the music. What you immediately notice about the artists is that each person just seems to radiate this kind of joy that spills over onto the crowd so that crazy things like a mosh pit to klezmer music happen.
The lineup for this year's festival looks fantastic! Eva Ayllon. DaDon. Frigg. Fruit. Sufi Music Tradition (with the Whirling Dervishes from Konya, Turkey). Vasen. Le Vent du Nord. Warsaw Village Band.
Whirling Dervishes, people! I mean, c'mon! How often do you see something like that in the Midwest? :-)
This is probably the closest that I'll ever come to getting preachy here: If you can't make it to Lotus this year, remember it for next year - it's always in September. If you simply can't find your way to Bloomington, then look for the performers listed on the LotusFest website coming to a venue somewhere near you because they're usually touring North America and Lotus is a stop along the way. If you can't catch 'em live, buy a CD. This is music that touches your soul, tapping into the collective unconscious so that the very spirit of it grabs you and it doesn't matter that you don't understand Polish or Luganda or know what sort of instrument a kalangou or nyckelharpa is.
I've been able to see so many amazing and interesting performers. Lila Downs. Hedningarna. Les Yeux Noirs. Tracey Grammer. The Wrigley Sisters. Kanenhi:io Singers. The Senegal American Project. Odette. Oh, the Italian bluegrass group - Red Wine or something like that. Oh, woe....There are so many truly great folks I'm forgetting!
I've learned how much I really, really like Nordic fusion and certain styles of drumming and gypsy klezmer music, and how much I don't particularly care for Italian trance music (or at least not the way it was performed by a certain group last year).
The magical thing about Lotus is that it often doesn't really matter who's performing or even how much you like or don't like the music. What you immediately notice about the artists is that each person just seems to radiate this kind of joy that spills over onto the crowd so that crazy things like a mosh pit to klezmer music happen.
The lineup for this year's festival looks fantastic! Eva Ayllon. DaDon. Frigg. Fruit. Sufi Music Tradition (with the Whirling Dervishes from Konya, Turkey). Vasen. Le Vent du Nord. Warsaw Village Band.
Whirling Dervishes, people! I mean, c'mon! How often do you see something like that in the Midwest? :-)
This is probably the closest that I'll ever come to getting preachy here: If you can't make it to Lotus this year, remember it for next year - it's always in September. If you simply can't find your way to Bloomington, then look for the performers listed on the LotusFest website coming to a venue somewhere near you because they're usually touring North America and Lotus is a stop along the way. If you can't catch 'em live, buy a CD. This is music that touches your soul, tapping into the collective unconscious so that the very spirit of it grabs you and it doesn't matter that you don't understand Polish or Luganda or know what sort of instrument a kalangou or nyckelharpa is.
