While everyone in Bloomington stared dumbfounded at their television sets on Sept. 11, the Lotus Fest performers of Yat-Kha were holed up at an airport in Newfoundland. Stranded with 6,000 other passengers until Monday morning, the musicians traveled to a Chicago area Holiday Inn to await the show that must go on.\nAfter missing a festival appearance in California, Yat-Kha will perform at the Lotus World Arts and Music Festival this week -- the first show of its month-long stateside tour, tour manager Stuart Cohen says. He was in California awaiting the band's arrival and had to drive a van cross country to meet up with the Tuvan throat singers. \n"They're very happy to be in the country," Cohen says, calling from a torrential downpour on a Wyoming interstate. "They seem fine. They're determined to go ahead with things. They were very enthusiastic to be in a hotel room, in peace and quite, especially after their experience in Newfoundland."\nOther scheduled performers haven't been able to meet with the same improvisational travel tactics. But, despite cancellations from Bamboleo (for Visa problems), Kila, Altamira Carrilho, Gangbe Brass Band, Paris Combo, Susana Seivane, Vasen and Fiona Ritchie, executive director Lee Williams promised the Lotus Festival will continue.\n"We're amazed and proud that those groups would take those kind of risks and days and days and days to come here," Williams says. "It wasn't supposed to be like that…but we're in awe that they're going to make it."\nFor five days this week, a certain international flavor is infusing this tiny Midwestern pocket, filling Bloomington streets with the sounds of Dominican merengue, South Indian spirituals and Zimbabwean song. \nSponsored by Smithville Telephone Company, Abodes, The Herald-Times, Union Board and WFHB, the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival will feature artists of international acclaim and stature -- though they might enjoy relatively little exposure in the United States. \nAnd while the typical audience has previously consisted of the 25- to 45-year-old set, founder and director Williams says that doesn't have to be -- and shouldn't be the case this year.\n"That age group is the demographic for world music worldwide," Williams says. "College students usually aren't included in that group."\nHe says he's not sure why young people generally don't support world music, but believes the cost of attending many Lotus events deter students from coming to the concerts. Lotus supporters attribute more expensive ticket prices to the large number of international artists, many of whom college students often don't recognize. When students aren't familiar with top-billing acts on a lineup, they aren't willing to shell out more money to see an "unknown" act, Williams says. \n"Money's important," Williams says. "So if you see a ticket price of $20 and don't recognize any names, you're not likely to come."\nWednesday's kickoff concert, featuring African bluesman Habib Koité and his Malian band Bamada -- a group Williams says "students as well as 30-year-olds will like" -- is designed to alleviate those financial concerns (costing only $5 with a student ID) and drum up student support for Lotus events.\nThe concert, scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre on Kirkwood Avenue, will showcase Koité's guitar virtuousity, which caused The New York Times to deem him "a guitar god" in the United States. \nHis music swings like an easy Cuban groove, yet is tinged with blues influences that are distinctly American. The arrangements are largely acoustic, lacking extraneous adornments -- a throwback to Koité's childhood experience playing the kamele n'goni, a traditional Malian four-stringed instrument.\nKoité terms his rhythmic style "danssa doso," a Brazilian moniker he created.\n"I put these two words together to symbolize the music of all ethnic groups in Mali," Koité says. "I'm curious about all the music in the world, but I make music in Mali. In my country, we have so many beautiful rhythms and melodies -- usually, Malian musicians play only their own ethnic music, but me, I go everywhere."\nWhile the band gets minimal airtime on American radio stations, it has been featured in such mainstream American magazines as Rolling Stone, People and Rhythm Magazine and made its American debut on "Late Night with Dave Letterman". Yet Williams feels many students still haven't heard Koité's music, largely because they've been influenced heavily by local and networked radio stations, Williams says. \n"People find out about artists in very different ways," he says. "There's less opportunity to find out about world music. I think the majority of students would think world music's incredible, but the names are pretty obscure here."\nWilliams encourages students to "get past Indiana Avenue" and into Bloomington. The festival is a community event; IU has not subsidized the project. Williams says he feels many students stick close to their comfort zones, both literally and figuratively. \nWhile Williams acknowledges the difficulty in reaching certain segments of the IU population, especially freshmen, he realizes some students will seek out the cultural breadth Lotus affords.\n"You'll find the students that are naturally going to gravitate to left of center concepts, whether that's politics or cultural events," Williams says. "They'll find us, and they do -- and that's where those few hundred undergraduates will come and think the festival's fantastic."\nWilliams' own zeal for collecting world music spawned the first Lotus Fest eight years ago. He was working for local nightclubs as a booking agent, bringing contemporary and alternative music to popular Bloomington nightspots. But occasionally he'd bring in the sort of music he liked -- strange breeds of rock, pop, blues, jazz, of drums, vocals and rhythm characterizing world music. \nWorld music as a genre didn't really exist before the 1980s, says LuAnne Holladay, administrative director for Lotus. \nThe classification stemmed from a gathering of music business professionals in Europe unsure of how to classify the international releases that really didn't fall under any specific category. \n"Radio stations didn't know what to call them," Williams says. "When you have a group that, for example, mixes hip hop with salsa, that creates a totally different sound. So what do you call that?"\nFrom a "practical marketing" standpoint, Williams says, it's world music -- a name that "doesn't really define what it is -- but it's stuck."\nWilliams says bands often blur the edges within genres, as exemplified by the reggae-infused Indo-Carribean blend offered up by U.S. band Funkadesi. \nThe Chicago-based group is a hodepodge of Jamaican, European-American, Latino, African American and Indian American heritages, mixing vocals, guitars, saxophone, congas and traditional ethnic instruments to produce Indian-inspired funk. \nThe band strives to link ethnic and minority associations within universities with the community at large, as evidenced by several college-town appearances in the Midwest. Its debut full-length CD, Uncut Roots, has earned considerable repute and spin time in Chicago clubs. \nIt also sponsors youth workshops featuring live drumming and sampling, as well as forum discussions about intercultural collaboration and gender issues in the music industry.\n"Bands such as Funkadesi relate to students," Williams says. "Students can identify a cause they're allied with and say, 'Hey, here's a band that speaks to that,' and they can get hooked on that music."\nAllying music with the impetus for social change, Williams says, is a way to market the category of world music to new demographic groups, especially students. \nWhile world music isn't usual top 40 fare, Williams says students are guaranteed to find at least one group of interest headlining the festival.\n"For every one of the 32 featured artists, some students will think they're fantastic," Williams says. "It's just a matter of getting off campus and expanding your thinking."\nAdvance tickets are available at Athena, BloomingFoods, Borders and TD'S CDs and LPs, or by phone from the Lotus Festival office at 336-6599. Visa and MasterCard only are accepted for telephoned orders.
For the latest Lotus Festival events schedule, visit www. lotusfest.org.
