What was I worried about? The weather was great, the people came and the plasma screen worked – or at least it did once Tommy shot off to get batteries for some crucial part and Alan spent half an hour trying to get hold of the technician at the hire shop.
After focusing on the film aspect of FEAST in my last blog, for 40 minutes or so it looked as if we would be showing the crowd a blank screen. But the new batteries did the trick and as soon as the music began people moved towards our makeshift stage, where Mrs Szeto served Chinese tea at tables between the cured meat and ostrich burgers at the Eating Place food market in Castle Street.
My other worry had been potential competition from the loud band in the big tent housing the Malaysian Festival at the other end of the street. Magically, their music stopped when it was time for FEAST to begin and the musicians even came to listen to FOUND, Kimho and Filip with real interest, or so it seemed to me. A victory for interculturalism which is what Kimho’s event was all about.
So after weeks of fretting, sun shone on the FEAST. I’m hoping Alan and Tommy will get back from wooing the crowds at the Connect Festival soon to upload the film and music because I am struggling to find words to describe the oddly magical mix of percussion, electronics, yang chin and soprano sax while Alan blended his images of Chinese food with live film of the music makers. There’s Bobby on wok playing a fast rhythm for Galloping Horses while Kimho shimmers on the yang chin, Filip’s sax soars and FOUND work their electronic mischief on all the sounds and rhythms. My neighbour Nick, summed it up perfectly, “it’s not a combination you would dream of but it really works.”
The ring of smiling faces seemed to prove the point.
One problem I never dreamt of was that the FEAST website carried the wrong time for the performance. Apologies to Rob and other friends who were misled by the blog. That’s a lesson for me: always update the website!
While I was blogging my quick FEAST report FOUND were on their way to stardom at Connect: from Castle Street to the lawns of Inverary Castle, alongside Bjork and Primal Scream.
I got the news a few days later in a bothy on Canna where we discovered we had broadband connection and the first email was from Tommy describing the crowd of 500 waiting to hear them play. And him in his wellies too.
Alan said he got quite a surprise when he walked on stage and saw how many people were there to hear them play. Well, he put it a little stronger than that but basically they weren’t expecting such a great response for the first band of the festival. All in all a fantastic success and I would have blogged this before now but family forces kept me from the keyboard in the bothy.