Living Lotus

Lotus Festival
Bloomington
Sept. 22-25

Now in its 12th year, the Lotus World Music & Arts Festival continues to be the best world music festival around. Wait, you say: What about Chicago’s world music festival? Well, it’s pretty dandy, too, but it’s rather spread out across Chicago and, in fact, Bloomington’s Lee Williams and his Lotus Fest crew managed to book nearly two-thirds of the acts our Chicago friends experienced. So, instead of driving around Chicago to catch the music, you can see two dozen bands from around the world within a few-blocks area of B-town. Streets are shut down, cars abandoned and hundreds of revelers walk to the eight music venues that include churches, the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, street performances and, for the first time this year, the venerable Bluebird.

The Thursday night kick-off included a concert featuring the Wailin’ Jennys and Ruthie Foster, followed by a street dance led by Plena Libre, a seven-member plena band from Puerto Rico. An auspicious start, especially for those of us with a dance party focus.

On Friday, the festival began in earnest with the full lineup of over five hours of performances. Inspired by our friends from the Indianapolis Key school, we determined to catch Jake Shimabukuro, virtuoso ukulele man, who attended last year’s Ukulele Fest and workshopped with the Key Strummers. Starting off with a beatific rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Jake moved through a variety of genres from ballads to rock ’n’ roll to classical, complete with the occasional, hilarious guitar face. Next up for us was a journey to Niger, where Afro-popstars Mamar Kassey played their blend of ancient and modern African music. The dance floor was packed and proved to be a nice warm-up for the most anticipated band of the festival, Balkan Beat Box.

This collective involves musicians from North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans: Call it carnival klezmer electronica hip-hop fusion. The Bluebird was packed as the band entered from the back, troubadours on foot, wearing pig masks and playing drums and wind instruments. By the second song, nearly everyone was moving, jumping like pistons interwoven with the Middle Eastern sashays and hand-dances. This is one of the greatest party bands we have ever encountered, resting their instruments only to down the occasional shot and drain their Rolling Rocks.

From there, it was a natural segue to find Funkadesi, the Chicago-based groove band who integrates East Indian with reggae, funk and Afro-Caribbean rhythms.

Given our focus on the dance, we missed the opportunity to see any number of other offerings, including Nordic folk by Frigg, American folk music from Rachael Davis and Jake Armerding, French Gypsy jazz from Samarabalouf. The word on the street on Friday was the must-see nature of Trio Joubran, a band of three brothers who play Palestinian oud.

As we always say, there are no wrong choices at Lotus.

The next day, a free, day-long festival in Third Street Park featured a handful of bands, and also provided kids with plenty to do, such as face-painting, hat-making and parades.

By evening, all the choices to be made notwithstanding, Seu Jorge was a certainty. This Brazilian samba artist is best known to American audiences as the Life Aquatic guy, the musician who sang the David Bowie songs that accompanied Wes Anderson’s 2004 film. Late into his energetic set, we hurried to another tent venue to see the Creole Cowboys for some good, old-fashioned Cajun and Zydeco fun. Then came the big choice: see Balkan Beat Box for the second time or wander into the city to delight in discovering new acts. It’s tricky: You can’t step into the same musical river twice. However, we trusted BBB would deliver, and this time, in a tent setting, the crowd was populated by many under-21s, who quickly packed the front of the stage. How’d it go?

Let’s put it this way: In all our years of Lotus festival-going, we have never experienced a stage dive from one of the performers. BBB’s lead singer and percussionist — and as it turned out an acrobat who hung from the infrastructure of the tent — dove into the crowd and was passed around. It was difficult for us to get purchase on his sweaty, shirtless torso, but we weren’t about to let him drop. Inspired, a woman dancer allowed herself to be carried aloft and passed along the crowd. Sweat poured from everyone as we all, forming one body, jumped in crazy simultaneity. By the end of their set, the BBB had pulled a couple dozen members off the dance floor onto the stage, obliterating the line between performer and audience.

Late in the evening, heading back toward the Buskirk-Chumley, we encountered two men sprawled in the middle of Walnut Street, B-town’s main thoroughfare, cordoned off for the festival. When quizzed, one of the men remarked, “How often can you just lay down on Walnut Street. Everything inside you says, ‘This is wrong,’ yet it feels so right.”

Soon after, outside the BCT, we weighed our options. We could see Kusun Ensemble or Frigg or Nawal (from the Comoros Islands) or even Funkadesi again, but instead we sat, noticing that music not listed on the schedule was taking place. On our right, inside Athena, a local store, an impromptu drum jam was taking place. Then, about 20 yards in front of us, a man pulled out a harmonica and another started banging on a table. A woman began to dance and someone else used a chair as a percussion instrument.

Music was everywhere and continued into the night at the after-party in a downtown apartment. There, musicians from different bands performed together while many of us sought the rooftop deck. Ebullient from our global adventures, we felt the gentle breeze reminding us that summer was truly over. Lotus, once again, had provided a pivot point in the seasons, a celebration of music and the joy of dance.