Rainforest World Music Festival in Kuching (Sarawak)
Part of the Kuching (Sarawak) travel guide — see every topic in All Kuching (Sarawak) Guides.
The Rainforest World Music Festival has been held at the Sarawak Cultural Village at Damai, about forty minutes from Kuching, since 1998, and has become one of the best-regarded world music festivals anywhere. The setting does much of the work: a reconstructed village of traditional longhouses in rainforest at the foot of Mount Santubong, with the sea on one side and the jungle on the other. The format is unusual and is what people come back for — daytime workshops and jam sessions, evening main-stage performances.
The format
Daytime is given over to workshops in the longhouses: musicians from completely different traditions demonstrate their instruments and then, more interestingly, are put in a room together and asked to play. A Sarawakian sape player, a Mongolian throat singer, an Irish fiddler and a West African kora player working out a groove in real time is a genuinely unusual thing to watch. Evenings move to the main stages for full sets. The mixture of the two, in a small site, is what distinguishes it from a conventional festival.
The music
The programme deliberately balances international acts with music from Sarawak and the wider region, which means the sape — the boat-shaped lute of the Orang Ulu peoples, played with a repeating hypnotic pattern — gets a proper platform alongside acts from Europe, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. Indigenous Bornean groups perform in a setting that treats them as musicians rather than as a cultural display, which is not universal at events like this.
Practicalities
The festival usually runs over three days in the middle of the year; dates move, so check. Tickets are sold as day passes and three-day passes and are inexpensive by international festival standards. Accommodation at Damai fills months ahead and prices rise; many people stay in Kuching and use the shuttle buses, which run late. It rains — this is a rainforest — so bring a poncho and footwear you can ruin. Bags are checked and there are rules on what you can bring in.
The Cultural Village year-round
Outside festival week, the Sarawak Cultural Village operates as a living museum: seven traditional dwellings representing the Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu, Melanau, Malay and Chinese communities of Sarawak, each staffed with people demonstrating crafts, cooking and music, plus a daily dance performance. It is a reconstruction and makes no secret of it, and as an introduction to a state with over twenty-seven ethnic groups it is genuinely useful before you visit a real longhouse. It sits under Mount Santubong with Damai's beaches alongside.
Rainforest World Music Festival at a glance
| Running since | 1998, at Damai, ~40 min from Kuching |
|---|---|
| The setting | A longhouse village in rainforest below Mount Santubong |
| The format | Daytime workshops and jams; evening main stage |
| Local instrument | The sape — the boat-shaped Orang Ulu lute |
| When | Three days mid-year — dates move, check |
| Year-round | Sarawak Cultural Village — seven traditional dwellings |