umichsmtd

By Bertolt Brecht, translated by Ralph Manheim
Directed by Malcolm Tulip

Department of Theatre & Drama
Oct. 5 & 12 at 7:30 PM Oct. 6, 7, 13, & 14 at 8 PM 
Oct. 8 & 15 at 2 PM Arthur Miller Theatre
League Ticket Office 734-764-2538 tickets.smtd.umich.edu

The RC congratulates its award-
winning faculty and students!

Find our schedule of events at 
lsa.umich.edu/rc/alum-
ni-friends/the-residential-col-
lege-50th-anniversary-celebration

Heather Thompson (2017) and 
David Turnley (1990), winners 
of the Pulitzer Prize

Laura Kasischke, long-listed for 
the National Book Award (2017)

32 students have recently won 
the prestigious UM Hopwood 
Awards!

Book by Jeremy Desmon 
Additional songs by Jeff Thomson & Jeremy Desmon
Arrangements and Orchestrations by Jesse Vargas

Oct. 12 & 19 at 7:30PM • Oct. 13, 14, 20 & 21 at 8 PM
 Oct. 15 & 22 at 2 PM • Lydia Mendelssohn 
Theatre
Reserved seating $30 & $24 • Students $12 w/ID
League Ticket Office • tickets.smtd.umich.edu

Department of Musical Theatre 2017-2018 Season

A new jukebox musical about love, rock ‘n’ roll, 
and second chances featuring pop hits 
from the 80s to today 

6B — Thursday, October 12, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

MUSIC PROFILE

COURTESY OF THE LOTUS FESTIVAL

Lotus Festival shows what 
we gain from world music

International musicians and artists gathered in Bloomington for 
three days to share in individual culture and personal performance

In an ideal world, people 

would 
see 
something 
“like 

nothing 
they’ve 
ever 
seen 

before” on a regular basis. Some 
lucky people do. Sometimes 
the phenomenon is scheduled; 
sometimes 
it’s 
completely 

spontaneous.

In Bloomington, Ind., that 

awe is guaranteed at least once 
every year, one weekend in 
September.

This 
experience 
is 
the 

Lotus World Music & Arts 
Festival: a yearly tradition in 
Bloomington that brings in 
artists from all over the world 
and of all different genres 
for a spectacular weekend-
long experience. Lotus is well 
known for its variety. One of 
the popular acts this year was 
Making Movies, an Afro-Latin 
band that mixes the persistent, 
energetic 
beat 
of 
alt-rock 

with the rhythm of zapateado 
huasteco, a traditional dance 
form from Mexico. Performing 
at the same time as Making 
Movies 
was 

the Raya Brass 
Band, 
which 

specializes in — 
according to the 
festival schedule 
— “Balkan brass 
with 
an 
urban 

edge.” 
Earlier 

in 
the 
evening 

was 
Lo’Jo 

(“genre-bending 
French-North 
African-Gypsy mix”), and listed 
later on the program was Trio 
da Kali (“soulful Malian Mandé 
griot traditions”).

Lotus was established in 

1994, which makes it one of the 
oldest world music festivals 
in the country. Every year, 
more 
than 
12,000 
people 

congregate 
in 
Bloomington, 

where the festival is set up 
in the streets downtown. It’s 
situated 
primarily 
around 

the 
courthouse 
square: 
the 

intersections 
of 
Kirkwood, 

Walnut, College and 6th Street, 
blocking in the city courthouse. 
This square is the center of 
downtown and the heart of 
Bloomington, 
which 
is 
the 

college town home to Indiana 
University.

“I was excited to perform 

for a new audience that never 
saw 
me 
before,” 
Canadian-

Cuban singer-songwriter Alex 
Cuba said of Lotus in an email 
interview. “I look forward to 
[lifting] people’s spirits up ... 
and [making] them connect 
with 
beauty 
and 
happiness 

through the positive vibes of my 
songs.”

Cuba played Friday evening 

in 
First 
United 
Methodist 

Church, one of seven venues set 
up throughout downtown. All 
told, there were three churches, 
one historic theater, one club 

and two giant tents. The tents 
were set up on blocked-off 
streets, and had food, soda and 
locally brewed beer sold at their 
entrances.

“As a Cuban musician, it 

is possible that some of the 
Caribbean flavors are in my 
music,” Cuba said. “I don’t 
think of genres or styles when I 
do music. I just write the songs 
in whatever style they come 
to me and that’s how I record 
them. Music for me is above 
everything 
else 
freedom 
of 

expression.”

This was a sentiment that 

nearly everyone at Lotus seemed 
to share. The artists differed 
widely not only in terms of 
origin and genre, but also the 
energy level of their music. 
Some of the performances were 
high-energy and fast-paced, and 
some were slower and gentler, 
but equally invested with depth 
and emotion. This investment 
was 
the 
common 
thread 

between them — the profound 
care for the music and the 
passion of wanting to share it.

One band further on the 

high-energy 
side 
was 
De 

Temps Antan, a 
Canadian group 
that 
specializes 

in 
traditional 

Québécois folk.

“Fiddle music 

in 
Quebec 
is 

really 
lively 

music, 
full 
of 

joie 
de 
vivre,” 

said vocalist and 
fiddle 
player 

André 
Brunet. 

“We 
sing 
call-and-response 

songs, so it’s a lot of energy 
on stage, especially with the 
tapping we’re doing with our 

feet.”

The 
energy 
that 
Brunet 

and his two bandmates, Éric 
Beaudry and Pierre-Luc Dupuis, 
bring to the stage is nothing new 
to them. Growing up in Quebec, 
the three were long exposed 
to the roots of 
this 
“kitchen 

music,” 
which 

Brunet describes 
as “the sound of 
the kitchen, you 
know, the spirit of 
everyone.”

“The 

traditional music 
was 
there, 
so 

anytime 
of 
the 

year was a time to 
sing a song, to tap 
the feet, to take 
out the fiddle, the 
guitar, and sing,” 
Brunet said. “So 
we grew up there 
with the music 
and with the bands. I want to 
say the music is still a big part 
of us being here... It’s really a 
kitchen party where everyone 
is dancing and being part of 
the same big party. So this is 
what we create live on stage 
with different arrangements of 
traditional music.”

And he was right: everyone 

was 
dancing. 
This 
was 
a 

commonality 
that 
could 
be 

traced 
through 
the 
entire 

festival, but most particularly 
with the bands like De Temps 
Antan 
that 
played 
in 
the 

tents on the streets around 
the courthouse square. The 
audiences were made up of 
people of all ages, from children 
with their parents to high 
school and college students to 
older adults, and all of them 

LAURA DZUBAY

Daily Arts Writer

were smiling and dancing 
to the music. They weren’t 
dancing in the same way, but 
that hardly even mattered — 
to look at them, they were all 
dancing.

“Everywhere we’ve been on 

the planet, everyone has the 
same reaction,” Brunet said. 
“Because we sing in French, 
so they’re like, ‘Okay, what 
is that language? It’s French, 
but it’s not from France, it’s 
not from Louisiana — oh, it’s 
from Quebec, okay.’ After a 
while, they understand that 
... all of the words that we 
say go with the rhythm of the 
music.”

This 
could 
have 
been 

some sort of an illusion, but 
at Lotus, it really did come 
across like everybody was 
on the same page. During 
the 
half-hour-long 
breaks 

between 
shows, 
people 

got food and drinks, they 
checked out the arts tables set 
up on 6th Street and stopped 
to 
catch 
the 
enlivened 

performances 
of 
Indiana 

University’s 
Breakdance 

Club. Then they filed back 
into 
the 
tents, 
churches 

and other venues to see the 
artists, and even if they had 
never heard of or seen those 
artists before, they were still 
perfectly excited to be there 
and ready to dance.

“It’s really fun when we 

see those reactions,” Brunet 
said. “Some people would 
say to us, ‘Wow, I just forgot 
all 
my 
problems 
for 
an 

hour and a half during your 
show!’ So it makes us really 
happy, because it’s exactly 
the purpose of our music in 
Quebec — well, traditional 
music from every country 
on the planet. The main idea 
is to get everyone involved 
and play all together, and 

forget 
about 

what’s going on 
and just have 
a 
nice 
hour 

or two of fun. 
So 
it’s 
really 

nice to see the 
differences, but 
it’s more or less 
the same thing 
from place to 
place.”

Lotus 
is 
a 

great 
yearly 

experience for 
Bloomington, 
offering 
a 

weekend 
of 
fun 
and 

togetherness 

for the students and faculty of 
IU and for the rest of the city. 
However, it’s also a communal 
experience within a broader, 
international context. It’s the 
act of seeing people connect 
so genuinely to music that 
comes from so far away 
from them, whether that’s 
Chilean folk fusion, Tuvan 
throat-singing 
or 
Chinese 

guzheng. It’s like nothing 
you’ve ever seen before, and 
arguably nothing that you 
could encounter anywhere 
else. It’s an experience that 
makes the word “community” 
momentarily mean something 
bigger, 
something 
that 

goes beyond the city itself: 
something all-encompassing 
and belonging to nothing 
smaller than the world. 

BRING BACK THESE 

TRENDS:
GAUCHOS
PONCHOS

PLATFORM FLIP FLOPS

HORSE T-SHIRTS

LIVE STRONG WRIST 

BANDS

PUCCA SHELL 
NECKLACES

FEATHER EXTENSIONS

HEELIES

GET RID OF THESE 

TRENDS:

NON-PRESCRIPTION 

H&M GLASSES

JOIN STYLE

JOIN THE REVOLUTION

E-mail join.arts@umich.edu for 

information on applying.

“Music for me is 
above everything 
else freedom of 

expression”

It’s like nothing 

you’ve ever 
seen before, 
and arguably 

nothing that you 
could encounter 
anywhere else

