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GOD VIBRATIONS A wide world of mystical music-makers come together for Brisbane's second Sacred Music Festival. Vincent Plush examines its appeal. On a drizzly Sunday afternoon a year ago, an unusual procession curled along the banks of the Brisbane River. Hundreds of people, including many families in a vivid array of national costumes, followed a group of Tibetan monks, resplendent in burgundy and saffron robes and soft helmets. To the blare of long horns and the drone of guttural chants, the sands of a sacred mandala were spilled ceremoniously into the river. So ended the first Sacred Music Festival at the Brisbane Powerhouse. The organisers expected a couple of thousand people but more than 8000 thronged the event last year. It's another success in the arts centre's presentation strategy of "boutique festivals", short, focused and appealing on many levels. No surprise that the Gyuto monks are returning this year to transform the monolithic Turbine Hall into a temple, with mandalas, chants and workshops. This festival grew out of the multi­cultural music program curated by Sim and Pat Symons at Queensland's Woodford Folk Festival over the past 10 years. Inspired by the Fez festival in Morocco they approached Chris Bowen, the Brisbane Powerhouse general manager and former director of Brisbane Ethnic Music and Arts Centre – and the Sacred Music Festival was born. Bowen sees it as satisfying the hunger for a musical experience, devoid of divisive religious proselytising, "a search for ­meaning and new ways to connect". It assembles an array of international and national visitors and local groups who rarely have the opportunity to share their spiritual art beyond their everyday lives. "We identify them as folk artists first," Bowen says, "and present them in a context where they feel meaningful." Sharing the Powerhouse Theatre stage with the Gyuto monks – a different group this year, we are promised, but ­ just as keen to play pool in the Powerhouse's Spark Bar – are two Australian- based Tibetan musicians, Tenzing Tsewang and Tenzin Choegyal, who together explore the spiritual and folk traditions of their ancient culture. Three female singers focus attention on Indian vocal traditions. Brisbane-based Sulagna Basu and Vijaya Visvanathan are joined by leading musicians from India – singer Shubha Mudgal and tabla player Aneesh Pradhan, high-profile exponents of Hindustani styles as well as the Sufi songs of Islamic mystics. Sufism is also celebrated by local musicians performing alongside the exhilarating Istanbul Music and Sema Group, the famous dervishes whose frenzied whirling transports us back to the 13th-century origins of these traditions. Festival-goers can move from Sydney-based shakuhachi grandmaster Riley Lee to gospel music from Tony Backhouse and the Heavenly Light Quartet, and the RoadKnight Caravan led by Margret RoadKnight. Oscar and Marigold explore an array of traditional Jewish music alongside mystical Christian song, including the ubiquitous Hildegard. Other Christian traditions are celebrated by two local groups, the Diversions Choir and the Schola Cantorum, swinging thuribles of incense with their Gregorian chant. Dance groups from Bali and Ethiopia perform alongside a shakuhachi duo. Aboriginal performer Adrian Burragubba summons the dawn in the Labyrinth in the Powerhouse grounds. Last year, the response to workshops was overwhelming, so this year's program has doubled the number of hands-on workshops and demonstrations. Bowen hopes that the Sacred Music Festival will help us think more positively about multiculturalism. "We don't handle our cultural diversity to our best advantage," he says. "If you don't allow that, you lose social cohesion as has happened in the former Yugoslavia." In an Australia he characterises as "the most culturally diverse nation of Earth", Bowen sees cultural festivals as ways of promoting that social cohesion. "Looking beyond the western musical canon, we can help defuse the recent backlash against Islam," he says. "There is beautiful music in the Sufi religion, as there is in all the great religions of the world, and that is what we celebrate in the Sacred Music Festival." Sacred Music Festival: Brisbane Powerhouse, May 1-6. For more details see www.brisbanepowerhouse.org Location of article on The Bulletin Website: here  ~ | CLOSE WINDOW | ~  |