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SARAWAN is a 6 member group of musicians who will be performing at the Rainforest World Music Festival this July at the Sarawak Cultural Village in Santubong, Kuching. Their music is a collection of different styles from various traditions found in Iran. Persian music, which conjures up images from Scheharazade and the Arabian Nights, is sensuous, passionate and very often, tinged with melancholy. Kurdish music also comes from the same stock but tends to be more Indian based, more instinctive and more impulsive than the refinement of Persian music. Both use elements of improvisation during performance so each rendition is very much up to the virtuosity of the singer and the emotional mood that he is in. SARAWAN was founded by Mohsen Kasirossafar who is a master drummer especially on the zarb which is goblet drum carved out of one piece of wood and which requires a very sophisticated technique and which can produce the most wonderful rolls and timbres in the right hands. He also plays the daf, a rounded drum with many lines of brass rings inside the skin. The other band members are also on similar drums, plus the smaller daire and the Iranian Jew’s Harp called the zamburak. The group was subsequently joined by Pejman Tadayon who brought the sound of string instruments into their performances. Pejman plays the tar and the setar – both very endearing lutes. He was initiated into the study of radif which is the assembling of essential themes of Persian classical and traditional music, when he was a young boy in Teheran. SARAWAN joins other bands from all over the world as they congregate in Kuching for the 8th Rainforest World Music Festival. The organizers search for as many different performers as possible to build the programme for the festival each year. This year, there will be groups from Colombia, USA, Pakistan, Buryatia, Belize, Poland, Australia, Ivory Coast, Thailand, Italy, Algeria and now, SARAWAN from Iran and Kurdestan.
The festival has two components – the daytime workshops where it is an informal hodge-podge of every sort of combination one can think of to get different musicians together and to make music together; and also the more structured evening shows where 17 groups this year will be alternating between the two stages set amid surrounding rainforests and the placid lake. Due to very enthusiastic responses to the past few festivals, the organizers have decided to control the number of tickets sold for each night of the 8th, 9th and 10th of July – a weekend that will usually see all the hotels at Santubong bursting at the seams with festival people. As usual, there will be bus shuttles to and from Kuching to help traffic congestion up in Santubong. Check the local dailies for schedules and stops or look up the website www.rainforestmusic-borneo.com for more information.
Yeoh Jun Lin
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