When RWMF almost became a WOMAD fest

THE 27th edition of Sarawak’s globally-renowned Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF) had kicked off last night at Sarawak Cultural Village (SCV) in the Santubong Peninsula near Kuching – its home since 1998.

The inaugural festival, on a hot August night in 1998, had a small makeshift wooden stage with simple roofing, as well as bamboos and banana leaves for decorations.

It allocated barely enough space to pack in a six-piece musical band with all their instruments, sound gears and stand-alone microphones.

The set-up was very basic, with just-adequate sound and lighting equipment – there was no grand video projection or spotlights.

Back then, it had played to an audience of 350 people – mostly expatriates, with a few locals and some foreign tourists who happened to be visiting.

The ticket price was RM35 per person for two nights.

I remember being a founding member and on the selection committee, I was bestowed with some free tickets, which I could not even give away as friends had all turned me down!

So my family had taken the tickets instead.

I have heard that this year’s tickets cost RM635 per head, covering three nights for the early birds; for the Sunday night finale, the door price is RM333.

The RWMF was the brainchild of Randy Raine-Reusch, a renowned multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist Canadian with a long and respected background in ‘ethnic music’ (as what the world music was more popularly known in the pre-2000s).

During a visit in 1997, he had fortuitously met Edric Ong of Society Atelier Sarawak, who introduced him to the Sarawak sape pioneer Tusau Padan.

During a social evening at my house, the three of us – Raine-Reusch, Edric and I – had expounded upon the lack of a showcase highlighting the ethnic music of Sarawak Dayak musicians, especially the many little known musical instruments unique to Sarawak.

We, then, took the idea under the auspices of the Society Atelier Sarawak to Robert Basuik, another Canadian who, at the time, was heading the marketing of Sarawak Tourism Board (STB).

A meeting was set up with STB director Dato Aloysius J Dris, who after some persuasion had greenlighted the entire project in partnership with Society Atelier Sarawak, which was represented by me and Edric.

The rest, as the popular cultural lingo goes, is history!

The first couple of years had seen many teething problems.

Society Atelier Sarawak, which was supposed to carry on with the project, was without sufficient funding and had to turn it over to STB, which at the time, had a very limited budget and was initially resistant to accepting a ‘handover project’ that had not been initiated from within its very own corridors.

Raine-Reusch was prepared to be the project coordinator for the festival. Of course, this came with a professional fee (or rather, a twin-package) as his own band of musicians, of various configurations, were also on the playlist during the early years.

The rest of us had worked on the project ‘au gratis’ (for free) throughout the period of the festival, except for certain benefits like free tickets, lodging and food at the hotels down at Pantai Damai.

A small core group had stayed with the RWMF organisation, selection and operation since Day 1 – I must take my hat off to fellow cohorts Yeoh Jun Lin, Yu Puay Yeo, Mohd Tuah Jais, Angelina Bateman, Jane Lian Labang, Heidi Munan and a few others.

I left in 2003.

After the third year in 2000, the post-mortem meeting (always held right after each edition of the festival) had highlighted a couple of ‘make-or-break’ situations for Year 4.

Word got out that the STB was hard-pressed to seek funds to finance the 2001 edition, and a couple of local entrepreneurs got extremely interested to take over.

At the behest of the STB, the working committee of RWMF 2001 were tasked by the intended party with taking part in a presentation, with the working paper on how they saw the direction and the future of the festival to be like.

Over a briefing, it was very obvious that the entrepreneur’s intention was to take the RWMF private, in either one of two ways: first, an outright takeover where the entire RWMF entity would be handed over lock, stock and barrel, and would be run as an entirely commercialised product (hitherto, it must be mentioned that the initial primary object of holding the RWMF was to make it a tourism brand that could help promote Sarawak overseas – its beauty, and places of interest with the unique music of the locals being the main focus and highlight).

The second one: should the proposal for an outright ‘sell-out’ was not possible or agreeable, the entrepreneur had already obtained the permission of the World of Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD) – an organisation based in Europe, which was founded in 1980 with an aim of celebrating the world’s many forms of music, arts and dance – to make an offer to incorporate RWMF into it, and turn the festival into a sort of ‘WOMAD – The Borneo Jungle’ edition.

The idea then would mean that the uniquely Sarawak-originated brand of RWMF would become just another part of the global WOMAD Festival.

We were then asked by the STB to consider these two offers from the same group of entrepreneurs. Without any much consideration, it was unanimously decided by our group to continue the RWMF in its present format; thus, rejecting those offers outright.

Then came the downer. The STB told us that it could not fully fund the 2001 edition to the level of what we had budgeted it to be, and that we needed to seek approval from the ‘higher-ups’ to obtain the additional financing.

At the time, Premier of Sarawak Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg was the state tourism minister. We quickly made an appointment to meet him, tasked with having our hands out for the proposed increased funding so that the fourth edition of the RWMF could take place, with our band selections intact.

Today, I can place on record that it was indeed Abang Johari who had saved the RWMF some 23 years ago. Without his final approval to allocate the desired funds and to proceed with the plan, the festival could not have gone on ahead.

I should also say that the 2001 edition had marked the real start of the RWMF, as we know it today.

Imagine this: had we said yes to the first option, the festival would today be in purely commercial hands, and who would know if it had survived or grown from strength to strength.

It was the plan back then to also change its name to that of a prospective main sponsor – the rumour during that time was initially, the Swedish car brand Volvo had wanted to ‘buy full sponsorship’ and later, it was the Danish ‘Carlsberg Beer’ that had outbidden everyone else.

For such global brands, with very deep pockets in advertising revenues and slush funds at their disposal, we could have been attending the Volvo’s ‘Music of the Jungle’ or ‘Carlsberg World of Music’ since 2001.

The second alternative that our committee could have opted for would be to turn the RWMF into the WOMAD Borneo Music Fest. As per the usual practice, we would then be deluged with acts from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas; thus, probably having our own local acts a niche – maybe 10 per cent of the stage space and time?

It would have defeated the original purpose – to highlight and showcase our very own Sarawak musicians, their arts, crafts and dances being part of, but secondary to, their unique ethnic music.

We thank and praise God that the RWMF has remained intact since 2001.

From a small audience of 350 on that first rainy night in August 1998, to last year’s record-breaking crowd of 21,000 spectators; from a playlist of 15 groups to this year’s 72 international musicians and 75 local acts, the RWMF has indeed come a long way.

May it continue to rule the world music globe for many more successful years to come.

Enjoy yourselves at Pantai Damai this weekend!

* The opinions expressed in this article are the columnist’s own and do not reflect the view of the newspaper.