Annual world music festival returns to Bloomington this weekend

Fushed with success, Lee Williams hurries into a small office on north College Avenue. The office is cluttered with several miscellaneous items. There's a shelf and desktop with a stack of demo CDs and informational leaflets. Williams, executive director of the Lotus Festival, is a tall and slender man with plenty of energy to spare. He proudly wears on his T-shirt a lotus blossom, the logo for the organization he helped start nine years ago.\n"We won!" Williams says with more than a hint of surprise in his voice, as he holds up the Community Enhancement Award that Lotus, a not-for-profit organization that promotes appreciation of world cultures through music and art, has just received from the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. \nTwo other people share the small office. One is LuAnne Holladay, the only other official Lotus employee. The other is Tom Hargis, a volunteer production assistant. Both toil over their keyboards, but take notice when Williams makes his announcement. \n"You're a treasure!" Holladay responds playfully.\nThe award couldn't have come at a better time. It is a testament to Williams' hard work and dedication. He has spent the past nine years organizing the annual Lotus World Music and Arts Festival. This year's five-day event hit downtown Bloomington Wednesday and will have patrons dancing in the streets through Sunday.\nTwenty-seven artists from around the world will represent their nations and cultures with performances in nine venues, including the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, the John Waldron Arts Center and two tents downtown.\n"It gives a chance for people to walk down the streets of Bloomington that they love, go into places that they love, see their friends on the street and talk about all the music that they've seen in the Bloomington environment," Williams says. "It's a really joyous occasion."\nPlanting the seed\nPlanning and producing Lotus Fest is a process that finds both Lotus employees and volunteers busy from the end of one year's festival through the finale of the next year's. A volunteer team, along with a group of sponsors, raised about $80,000 for this year's festival. A crew of around 300 volunteers will play key roles in ensuring that the event goes off without a hitch.\nLorain Addison, one of two volunteer coordinators for Lotus, says much of what Lotus does is based on the support of the community. Addison and her counterpart, Sarah Noggle, put in endless hours recruiting and training community members who have a desire to be part of this event.\n"All the parts are essential to the success of the Lotus Festival," Addison says. "If we didn't have volunteer support, the festival wouldn't exist." \nAs always, Williams is excited about this year's events. He says that while the artists change from year to year, the schedule format will remain mostly the same as in years past. \nThe festivities include a Wednesday kick-off concert, a Thursday concert, Saturday and Sunday showcase concerts and a Sunday World Spirit concert.\nA new addition to this year's schedule will be a Thursday night concert dubbed Lotus Late-Night. The concert will feature Yerba Buena, an Afro-Cuban group laced with U.S. hip-hop style, performing at Second Story Nightclub.\n"It's an opportunity to work with one of our weekend artists, to put them in a day early at a night club and have a different environment for their music," Williams says.\nWilliams stresses that while the late-night club show is for a 21+ audience only, all artists will hold all-ages concerts at some point over the course of the festival.\n"That's a big concern for us," he says. "We know that there are high school and college kids who come to the festival. We don't want to discriminate against them because they're not 21."\nWhat is world music?\nWilliams says he wouldn't try to define and categorize the kinds of music that people will hear at Lotus Fest.\nHe says "world music" is a marketing term that originated in the '80s when the record industry was forced to label a new wave of trans-continental collaborations resulting in new sounds and fusions of genres. He says the label doesn't accurately portray what the artists of Lotus Fest are all about.\n"I think the best way to describe what we do is sort of roots music from America and other countries, music that is not really mainstream commercial pop music that is here today, gone tomorrow," he says. \nWilliams says he strives to book artists who aren't making music to make money or become popular, but rather to reflect their culture.\nWilliams attributes this trend in genre-mixing to an increase in global communications and easier exposure to music from other cultures.\n"The world seems to be getting smaller, and more and more musicians are hearing other peoples' music," he says. "It isn't short-wave radio from New York to Africa anymore. You can pick up music from other cultures almost anywhere. Any time musicians hear new music, they get exposed to it, and somehow it works its way into their music."\nBringing a world of music to Bloomington\nGetting all of the artists here and coordinating the event is no picnic. \nWilliams says that even if the artists he wants are in the United States, they may not be in the Midwest during the week of Lotus Fest. \n"It all has to be timed perfectly with the last week or two of September," he says. "It's really kind of a little miracle that all these groups do wind up coming at this time."\nOne of the bigger hurdles for Williams in the current post-Sept. 11 environment is getting visas approved for all of the artists. Last year, several artists were forced to cancel appearances in the festival due to security issues.\nThis year, Williams says, the situation is looking much better. He says Lotus has been working with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, as well as with Senator Richard Lugar's office in Indianapolis, to get all the artists cleared for this week's event. \n"We've been working very hard as an organization and as a world music community," he says. "We know that post-9/11 visas are going to be scrupulously examined by our government. We understand issues of safety and security, and we don't want to make light of that."\nOne ensemble faces a unique situation when it comes to traveling to the United States for Lotus Fest. Väsen, a Swedish quartet from Uppsala that will be performing as a trio this week, will be without percussionist Andre Ferrari, who won't travel in an airplane after the horrific events of Sept. 11. Olav Johansson, who plays the traditional Swedish nykelharpa (a type of guitar) for Väsen, says it just didn't work for Ferarri to come with them this year.\nJohansson says that while he, violist Mikael Marin and guitarist Roger Tallrot had little problem getting their visas approved, they did have a long wait throughout the process.\n"We were taken by surprise by how much information was asked for and the amount of time the agency wanted to handle everything," Johansson says. \nDespite these hang-ups, Väsen started its U.S. tour on Sept. 19 at the Minneapolis Nordic Roots Festival and will end it at Lotus Fest. \n"I look forward to some great gigs and a nice audience," Johansson says. "The last time we played the Lotus Festival we got to hear some great music from other bands."\nSpreading the word\nAfter Williams gets the artists booked, he faces his next big challenge: promoting the event and building an audience. While he says the event is always popular, student attendance is usually less than stellar. He says Lotus Fest typically attracts students with more of a liberal and adventurous mindset.\nWilliams says there are some students who have supported Lotus since year one, but he adds that it's a challenge to interest the general student body.\n"There are a variety of targeted students who we know are interested in Lotus," he says. "But your average student there at Indiana University, even though we're a huge, huge popular community event, doesn't have a clue about us."\nWhen most students buy tickets to a show, they know the artists on the bill. Since many students have not heard of the musicians at Lotus Fest, Williams says it's this lack of artist recognition that tends to deter potential fans. Instead, Williams hopes students will attend Lotus Fest out of pure curiosity. He thinks the artists are talented enough in their own right to merit student attention.\n"If anyone goes one time," he says, "they really love it and tell their friends, but getting them to come the first time is difficult." \nWilliams believes there is much knowledge to be gained from attending an event such as Lotus Fest.\n"I think that (the biggest benefit) would be the joy that comes from celebrating our cultural differences through the experience of live music," he says.\nWilliams hopes the cultural atmosphere provided through Lotus Fest will help expand the minds of Bloomington residents.\n"We're bringing something that you may never see the rest of your life into a small little venue in the town that you're living in," Williams says. "It's a way you can feel good, in stark contrast to what the terrorists were trying to intend."\nWilliams wants people to feel good, and his vision shows in the dedication of those around him, not only his coworkers, but the community in which he lives and works. His vision is to bring a little piece of world culture to a small midwestern college town and hoping people walk away with a new appreciation for the world community.\n"We're not solving world problems here," Williams says. "We're just doing the best that we can"