weekend of world music

roots festival, amsterdam
Originally uploaded by dutchlop.

One of the fun things of a summer in holland...are all the music festivals. this past weekend we went to two of them, both centering on 'world music'. On saturday we went to Festival Mundial in Tilburg. Quite a popular festival, with 3 or 4 stages and many other booths set up either selling 'worldly items' (aka hippie things)...or tents to promote supporting a good cause- mostly related to world health and charities and the such. The only name I knew of the musicians was Gabriel Rios, and I only knew one song of his. We also listened to a Ukrainian Folk band, which ended up being a rock band with an accordian and a metal sword, but they were fun. We heard of course some raggae and more often spanish/salsa music. It was a fun day, however it rained over half the time and the ground was quite muddy. But we didn't let that stop us from having fun and enjoying drinks to numb the pain in our feet from standing the whole day.

On Sunday, M and I went to Amsterdam with the intent to see a traditional Korean drumming group at the Roots Festival in the Oosterpark. In the early afternoon we went to the Tropen Museum, which chronicles life and cultures of those societies that live in the tropics. Pretty interesting...didn't get to see quite everything. Then we went to the park and walked around. Not quite as organized as well as Festival Mundial, but still ok. We saw this group perform traditional Javanese music on this large wooden xylophone type instrument. It was really neat and really good. About 10 men were playing at one time. It was very beautifully decorated as well (the instrument). Then at 430 when we thought the Korean group would play...they didn't. We finally asked someone at the info point and they said they were playing at 7 instead. We were getting rather tired, and would have been home after 10 if we stayed, so we decided to go home. Too bad, but hopefully there will be another opportunity in the future.

It was interesting to note that the tropical cultures we saw in the museum- from indonesian to african to latin- were the cultures and music that were highlighted at the Roots Festival, just down the street from the museum. It was a good combination.