Artists bring the world to Bloomington

Reindeer, gently falling snow and woolen sweaters are not the first things you think of when Bloomington comes to mind. But this year Scandinavia appeared and extended its wintery hand to downtown, sharing hundreds of years of musical and cultural tradition.

The 15th annual Lotus World Music and Arts Festival began gently this year compared to other years, opening Thursday night in the Buskirk-Chumley Theater with the Northern Realms concert. In the past, world-renowned world-fusion Balkan Beat Box explosively inaugurated Lotus Fest to begin the three day-long revelry and cultural exchange.

Thousands of world music enthusiasts, including students and Bloomington residents, congregated downtown to hear a mostly new artist list. With bands spanning from Spain to Syria, Mongolia to Mexico and Brown County, Bloomington’s arguably largest cultural event delivered the rest of the world to southern Indiana.

    SLIDESHOW: Lotus Fest

Featuring string bands Waltz with Me and Frigg, and Gaelic folksinger Julie Fowlis, Thursday’s Northern Realms series welcomed Lotus Fest-goers of all ages. Waltz with Me’s Annbjørg Lien inaugurated the concert with her band’s bluegrass and Swedish fiddle flavor. With three different types of fiddles and a cello, Waltz With Me gracefully awed the crowd with its unique blended sounds and melodies.

Friday night’s indoor and outdoor concert artists were not deterred by the chilly weather, with bands such as local roots and blues’ Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Hungarian ska/rock/gypsy’s Little Cow, Latin folklorico’s Pistolera and Mali desert blues’ Vieux Farka Toure filling the air.

Although Frigg was scheduled to play only at Thursday night’s opening concert, members of the Norwegian and Finnish string band set up on the sidewalk across from the Buskirk-Chumley Theater and played several of their songs on various stringed instruments, including dobro (a type of resonator guitar), mandola and a cittern (a type of flat-backed lute).

Frigg member Petri Prauda said the origins of the cittern go back to Renaissance Italy, Germany and England.

Junior Nick Yugo and his sister Katharine, a freshman, both said that as Lotus first-timers, the experience was worth going to again.

“The best part of the evening was listening to some of the bands who had already played in a tent earlier on in the day but love it so much that they just set up and kept playing on the street wherever people would hear them,” Nick Yugo said, alluding to the band Frigg.

For Katharine Yugo, getting off campus and meeting new people was her favorite part.
Saturday night was the paramount evening of Lotus Fest, notably beginning with Syrian singer Gaida Hinnawi in the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.

Hinnawi and her four-piece band performed traditional Arabic folk songs and some Arabic jazz pieces. Always keeping the audience engaged, the New York-based vocalist and composer mesmerized everyone who watched her performance.

As the evening progressed, some of the world’s most talented artists, including Pistolera, who sang Spanish songs about tattoos and lead singer Sandra Valezquez’s experience of being arrested, heated up the cold night.

Over at The Bluebird Nightclub, Brown County native Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band performed again, with a much older and more enthusiastic crowd.

Peyton’s wife Breezy jokingly scolded the Lotus planners, saying “it’s about damn time we bring Indiana music to this (world music festival).”

Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band performs in about 250 concerts and world music festivals in the United States, Europe and Canada, she said.

The unique Lo Cor de la Plana ended Lotus Festival in the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, singing in the ancient language Occitan, or Provençal, from southern France near the Spanish border.

In one of the final concerts, Little Cow magnetized crowds of Balkan Beat Box-proportions, and hipsters and yuppies alike danced for the entire hour-long set.
Saturday evening ended with a bang in the Carey Worldwide Chauffeured Tent near Fourth Street, with Chicago-based Funkadesi’s global fusion beats saturating the downtown area.

After teaching the audience bhangra, (a type of Indian dance from the Punjab region), Funkadesi made a shout out to a “certain Illinois senator.” When the crowd began to cheer wildly, bassist Rahul Sharma joked that he “didn’t know (the audience was) such Dick Durbin fans.” The band made a political statement in favor of the Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama and then continued its electrifying and energetic performance.

“I had heard from people who have gone in the past that it is one of the many things that makes Bloomington unique,” Katharine Yugo said. “Nowhere else in Indiana will you find the talent and diversity as this weekend here.”

Nick Yugo had the same opinion, saying “after this experience, Lotus Fest is definitely on my list of fall things to do as long as I am in Bloomington, and I totally encourage anyone who hasn’t gone before to take the opportunity and check it out.”