TABOO BREAKER NAHAWA DOUMBIA AT THE RAINFOREST WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL

Date: 06 June 2006
Written By: Yeoh Jun-Lin

Over the last 8 years that the Rainforest World Music Festival has been in existence, African bands have been a great favourite at the shows. Veterans of the festival will remember Omar Pene, Black Umfolosi, Aja Addy, Badenya Les Freres Coulibaly, Issa Bagayogo, and Yelemba.

All these bands have always been fronted been men. In fact, the only ladies in the bands were the back-up singers.

This year at the festival, a feisty young lady leads her own band from Mali.

NAHAWA DOUMBIA is one of the rising divas of Mali. Her mother died at birth but not before predicting that her daughter will be a singer. Their family did not belong to one of the jali tradition – a Manding caste that is allowed to perform music. On top of that, they were a muslim family where a woman entertainer was just out of the question. So her father and all her relatives tried to quash any musical aspirations – even going as far as to enlist the help of magical blacksmiths - but this lady has gone on to prove that her dying mother was correct.

She comes from a small village called Mafélé in the Wassalou region in south Mali, right next to the Ivory Coast border, and she sings about the world around her – love, social problems, African refugees in France, her stance against polygamy and the plight of African women.

The region that she comes from generates a lot of musical styles but basically Nahawa Doumbia uses the didadi style that is based on singing, dancing and percussion. Malian melodies are pentatonic by nature. Nahawa Doumbia also incorporates the use of the spectacular looking kamale n’goni, guitars and African percussion.

Mali, like Egypt, is centred around a great river. While Egypt has the Nile, Mali has the Niger. It creates a lusher central area with its annual floods. The majority of the north western area is semi-arid and desert, extending into the Sahara.

While the Bambara is the largest tribe and its language the lingua franca of the country, there is also the Songhai, Mandinka, Senoufa, Fula and Dogon. French is also widely spoken as Mali was a French Colony in the 19th century and only became independent in 1960.

The Dogon people have a fascinating story about how they were taught many things about astronomy by the Nommos (ugly amphibious creatures who resembled merpeople) who came to Earth thousands of years ago from Sirius’s. Myth? Perhaps – but the Dogons had artifacts depicting the 2nd and invisible star of Sirius and knew about Jupiter’s 4 moons and Earth’s own solar system long before the telescope was invented or the invisible white dwarf star was figured out.

To bring completely different cultures and music like this into Borneo is a big part of the Rainforest World Music Festival’s mission.

Apart from Nahawa Doumbia, there will also be bands from Kyrgyzstan, Korea, Austria, Mongolia, and more.

There will be about 100 musicians milling around the Santubong area come the July 7th – 9th weekend when the festival will take place.

The venue for this year will be the Sarawak Cultural Village, situated about 45 minutes outside of Kuching city.

Tickets are priced at RM60 and RM30 for children aged 3 – 12 years. They are available at the Visitor Information Centres in Kuching, Miri and Sibu. Or check the website www.rainforestmusic-borneo.com for packages or travel agents or outlets and updates on the festival. More enquiries can be made by calling the Sarawak Tourism Board at 082-423600.

The festival is run by the Sarawak Tourism Board with support from the Ministry of Tourism. They have on board with them, Malaysia Airlines who is Official Airlines 9th year running as well as fROOTS magazine as Media Sponsor. The official telco for the festival is DIGI and supporting sponsors are Heineken and Water Genesis.

PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association) awarded the Rainforest World Music Festival as the winner of the gold award 2006 in the Heritage and Culture category. PATA, the leading Bangkok-based travel industry, officially presented the award at the 55th annual conference in Pattaya, Thailand last April.

There are not many bands in the world music scene with strong lady stars, so the Rainforest World Music Festival is very pleased to have with them Nahawa Doumbia this year.

Yeoh Jun-Lin
Artistic Director
Rainforest World Music Festival