Lover of Lotus Fest

While IU is still experiencing Indian summer and football season is kicking off, downtown Bloomington transforms into an international Lollapalooza: the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival.

Every year, Bloomington’s Lotus Education & Arts Foundation flies in dozens of world-music artists for three nights of dancing, music and interactive art. To students who aren’t really into the party scene, Lotus Fest is the next best thing to Little 500. Even if you are a social butterfly, Lotus is still an awesome opportunity to schmooze with international artists and party with them after their shows.

Acts usually range from Tibetan throat singing to Afro-Cuban jazz, Iraqi folk music to French Algerian rai. Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Seu Jorge, who composed the soundtrack for the film “The Life Aquatic”, showed up a few years ago, and internationally known and loved Middle Eastern fusion group Balkan Beat Box started at Lotus Fest in 2005.

Unless you’ve lived in Bloomington all your life, you’ve probably never heard of Lotus Fest. I lived in Evansville (about two and a half hours away from IU) for 18 years, and I was never aware of its existence. But when I first saw the huge tour buses parked around downtown Bloomington and heard the foreign sounds of Srinivas Krishnan Ensemble (Indian and Afghani music), I fell in love. If you’re not into world music, you most certainly will be after walking around downtown during the festival. There is literally a genre for everyone in the music scene. Last year, the Bloomington yuppies swooned over “Dumb & Dumbers”’ Jeff Daniels while the younger crowd fought tooth-and-nail to get into the Bluebird to hear the very attractive MC Rai. Not into jazz or West African roots music? That’s fine, because Golem, a Hebrew klezmer rock group, and the March Fourth marching band showed up last year. Are you so over high school marching band? Not a problem. Cajun and swing The Red Stick Ramblers and reggae’s Taj Weekes entertained beautifully last year.

Taj was a riot, too. After hearing that I wanted to interview him before Lotus Fest began, he called me and answered my questions on his performances, and told me all about his philosophies on mainstream reggae.

I also had the opportunity to hang out with Balkan Beat Box after their one-time performance last year. Some of the coolest guys you’ll ever meet, their band is made up of Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and Balkans. On a worldwide mission to promote world peace, they informed me that Bloomington is, by far, their favorite place to perform.

Lotus is an expensive endeavor for college students (tickets usually cost about $30 for the entire weekend), but the IU Union Board has a free-admission tent, and really, you can hear any band you want outside of the tent in which they are playing. There are definitely ways to enjoy Lotus Fest without having to dip into your savings account.
For more information about Lotus World Music and Arts Festival, visit www.lotusfest.org. Ticket and artist information, in addition to the 2008 performance dates and schedules, can be found on the Web site.