SANTUBONG: Rainforest World Music Festival 2017 (RWMF 2017) has shown an increase of eight percent of its total sales of pre-sale tickets from last year’s edition.
This year, there were about 20,000 tickets sold compared to 18,000 tickets in 2016.
This was revealed by Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) Chairman Datuk Abdul Wahab Aziz in a press conference at Sarawak Cultural Village (SCV) here yesterday.
According to Wahab, this increase in tickets sold was without taking into account the Festival gate sales since the first day of the festival (14 July).
“Our objective of creating RWMF is to promote Sarawak as the region’s premier destination which emphasizes on performing arts and preservation of culture.
“It is also to deliver a world-class event that will generate generous revenue and profit for the local businesses, communities, sponsors and attract individuals into Sarawak and those from beyond,” explained Wahab.
He added that the 20th edition of RWMF has successfully discovered promising young local talents in the person of Alena Murang and the group, At Adau.
“Alena is one of the first women to openly perform and teach the sape, an ethnic musical instrument from Borneo, that used to be prohibited for the Orang Ulu community women to even touch in the old days.
“At Adau has been based in Sarawak since 2014 and plays ‘experimental world music’ centred on the traditional sape, with local Borneon tunes and musical instruments from around the world,” he said, adding that with these young local talents, the festival has proven that it has achieved its objective by taking Borneo music to the world is now a well-accepted music genre for our younger generation for preservation of their culture.
Apart from that, the event’s wellness programmes comprising meditation, workouts, martial arts, zumba and yoga first showcased on last Friday were well received, judgung from the packed venue.
In the meantime, Grab, first time partnering with the festival this year, has provided a unique festival travel experience.
Passengers were taking rides from Kuching city to the Festival with ‘discounted promo codes’.
With such success that they have experienced, Wahab stated that the organizer could look forward optimistically to next year’s RWMF which will take place on 13 until 15 July.
