The Festival

When I first heard about the Berkeley World Music Festival, I asked a good friend if she would like to come. The invitation evoked laughter. No, she said, chuckling, she would not be interested in an event likely to be attended by aging hippies and trend-chasing yuppies.

Oh dear. No, that didn't sound fun.

But, as festival organizer Gianna Ranuzzi explained, this is no petty festival of world music wannabes. Originally conceived by the Telegraph Area Association as a way to celebrate the ethnic diversity of the community's merchants, the Berkeley World Music Festival has grown in five years into a program of world-class acts including this year's headliner, Thomas Mapfumo. Considered Zimbabwe's most famous musical artist, Mapfumo is celebrated across the world for creating and developing the Chimurenga genre of Afropop. Chimurenga means "struggle" in the Shona language, and the music bearing its name often carries a message of social and political justice.

Mapfumo grew up with traditional Zimbabwean music but also claims a lifetime love of Bob Marley, John Lennon, Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, tinting his music with a universal flavor. Mapfumo sounded as excited to be playing the festival as Ranuzzi was to have him.

"If they want us to play there, every year, we can do that," he said. Many of the festival's performers have done just that.

According to Ranuzzi, there will be more festivals to come.

"It has a lot of potential. It's been going on for six years. I see that it's at the beginning, and it's taken a life of its own."

The Day

The day's fun began the moment I entered the Caffe Mediterraneum for the festival's first act and met pure delight in the form of Italian opera. This must be what happens in Europe, I thought, as I watched tenor Peter Girardot and soprano Svetlana Nikitenko waltz about the tables to the accompaniment of Ron Borelli's accordian, clinking glasses with everyone in the room. Their voices, trained to fill opera halls, shook the walls of the cafe with their power. To the impassioned wailings of "Con te Partiro," I embarked on the remaining eight hours of world music.

Over at People's Park the festivities were just beginning with the Zimbabwean music and dancing of Julia Chigamba. Families trickled into the park along with some of People's Park's usual suspects: a man dressed as Abraham Lincoln and a well-behaved parrot. Vendors sold art featuring abstract interpretations of cats' faces and flowy dresses not logistically suited to bra-wearing. It was an idyllic Berkeley summer scene, as a butterfly landed gracefully on one picnicker's shoulder. Everyone was happy, it seemed, save one displeased teenager slumped in the grass behind her wildly dancing mother reading what I can only assume was a copy of "Twilight."

The crowd became younger and hipper by the time Freddy Clarke's band Wobbly World wobbled onto the stage. Clarke defines his style as a fusion of rock, jazz, flamenco and classical paired with various other ethnic elements. As the name implies, Clarke's band members change with each performance. On Saturday, he was joined by Lebanese violinist Georges Lammam, Grammy-award winning violinist Mads Tolling from Denmark, drummer and singer Brian Collier and Bouchaib Abdelhabi on dombek and Arabic vocals.

"The way to be noticed in this sick, rich world is have something unique," Clarke said. The Wobbly World have just that.

In a stark contrast to Clarke's bright sound, Markus James and his world blues band took the stage for a deeper, darker set. We oozed into the grass and let the band cast a rhythmic spell. The sun beat down on faces and the didgeridoo of emcee Stephen Kent filled eardrums with its ceaseless vibrations. A few stoic souls danced around interpretively. Most sat in a relaxed daze, unable to be shaken even when a 3.3 magnitude earthquake hit.

I chased Markus James down after his set to ask him if he had felt the earthquake (he hadn't) and why he had decided to play at this festival. He put it simply: "It's free. How many free music festivals are there?" Not many.

Kent doesn't deny the role of his instrument in creating such natural phenomena. This wasn't the first time his music had preceded an earthquake. In an interview after the concert, the master didgeridoo player recounted a warning from a Hopi elder that his instrument's sound could bring rain. Shortly after this encounter, a long drought was broken by rainfall. Once, his didgeridoo even induced childbirth, or so he said.

"I believe the didgeridoo is a very powerful vibrational conduit," he said in a sly tone. "There's some potential magical powers in that instrument."

After James and company, it was time for the Lion of Zimbabwe: Thomas Mapfumo. When his band began to play, it became clear how much of the huge crowd in People's Park he had attracted. After a few songs, however, everyone was shocked by the ultimate anticlimax: The festival only had a permit for live music until 5:30 p.m., which had been reached. Mapfumo abruptly ended and apologized. Kent said it was an embarrassment to the festival that Mapfumo, "an exiled and outspoken critic of the government of his own country," had been cut short.

Despite the end of the People's Park element, the day was far from over. With continuous, overlapping acts in multiple locations, it was impossible to make it to every band, though I tried my darndest to hit as many regions of the world as possible, beginning with a short trip to Algeria.

Moh Alileche is as much about teaching as he is about music. Alileche is from the Kabilya region of Algeria, home to a large population of North Africa's Amazigh (Berber) people. Between songs on Saturday afternoon, he delivered patient lessons to the crowd of onlookers crammed into Amoeba music. He explained his peoples' preference of "Amazigh" over the French-derived term Berber and the proper word for couscous: seksu.

His latest album, In Memory of a Hero, is an homage to Lounes Matoub, an outspoken Amazigh musician assassinated 11 years ago in Algeria. Alileche spelled out Matoub's name so everyone could look him up, then continued his set of joyful, fast-paced imaginative music. I sat on the floor leaning against a pile of records with several peoples' rear ends in my face. I felt like a kid again.

Across the street in Manny's Tap Room, an unsmiling doorman checking IDs thwarted my attempt to see Helene Attia. Peeping my head in for a few minutes, I heard Attia's slow and schmaltzy rendition of Edith Piaf's "La Vie En Rose." Attia studied French and Italian at UC Berkeley, though she admits to missing class to sing on Sproul and in clubs.

She considers herself well-suited to Saturday's festival. "I blend several different cultures (in my music) because I myself am multi-cultural." Attia's grinning band seemed like it had just stepped off a cruise ship, with multi-instrumentalist Roger Glenn managing a toothy smile even as he played the flute.

The exact opposite of Attia's bombastic act could be found a block down Telegraph: the softly strumming electric sarode and the girlish vocals of Lisa Sangita Moskow in Moe's Books. Stepping into that store was like crawling into a womb filled with novels.

Moskow's fairytale, repetitive lyrics were incredibly soothing, as she encouraged her dozen or so listeners to sing along. With sarode filling the background, I contemplated the juxtaposition between the sweet music and stench of piss in the store's bathroom.

Exhausted and uneager to leave the warmth of Moe's, I made my way to the Village on Parker and Telegraph for the day's final act. I never knew this indoor collection of fondue and other quaint eateries existed. The rustic stone and wood decor perfectly complemented the Balkan, Romani and Sephardic music of the Black Olive Babes, whose rustic music inspired a makeshift circle of dancers pretending to be gypsies.

The Question

Standing and listening to the Black Olive Babes, watching the day's laughing musicians and attendees dip bread into pots of cheese and chocolate, I was consumed by the day's biggest worry: Where were all the young people? I had a great time and met some acclaimed musicians. I ate Yogurt Park in People's Park and got a weird v-neck tan. This is what students do.

Ranuzzi said she tried to encourage students to participate, but they didn't turn out in any significant numbers. What is so uncool about world music?

No matter how good the music or how sunny the weather, most Cal students wouldn't be seen near People's Park or a gypsy troupe.

But Berkeley students are interested in the world-or at least that's what the brochures would have prospective students' parents believe. They are interested in music. A festival is a fine way to spend a Saturday. But when put together, "World Music Festival" sounds like something to scorn to many students.

I admitted this to Stephen Kent. He said it was a shame. Stigmas around the idea of world music have been "narrowed by marketing peoples' definitions of it," he explained. Every kind of music, we agreed, is world music.

But a poor label shouldn't stop people from enjoying the event itself.

Every musician we spoke to created their band for a love of music but also to spread a greater message. Thomas Mapfumo said his music "is all about freedom and justice." Moh Alileche is working to spread knowledge of Lounes Matoub and his people's struggle. Freddy Clarke theorized in an explanation of his band's name: "Wobbly infers unstable … our Earth is definitely unstable and in dire need of our attention. So part of my goal here is to open people up to the predicament we're in and comment on our fragile earth."

We could laugh at this corny-sounding advice. Or we could heed it.

Tags: BERKELEY WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL, THOMAS MAPFUMO, MARKUS JAMES, FREDDY CLARKE, HELENE ATTIA, TRIO AMORE