Trista di Genova
The Wild East

The juicy inside story of what went down in the making of this year’s music festival

“Nice one! Rock on!” — Post-fest text message from Peace Dave

What an incredible weekend. After being postponed three weeks, and wisely rescheduled for Taiwan’s Birthday, Triple Ten weekend (10-10-10), the weather was fairly perfect, local and expat bands were more ‘haoting’ than ever, and by almost all reports everyone had a GREAT TIME in the historical, aboriginal mountain village of Chingchuan, Hsinchu County for the seventh annual Peacefest Music Festival.

I drove there from Taipei County. It took me 3 ½ hours, not a bad time, thanks to getting on Highway 1 from Taoyuan to Hsinchu with my scooter. At a rest stop near Hsinchu a pile of cops descended, bought my excuse of being lost, and gave me and my citypony a (free) ride to Hsinchu — no ticket, confiscation or anything! — dropping us off at a spot where all I had to go was ‘straight ahead’ on the 122. This is a good thing, ‘cause I was tired of getting lost, and nobody seemed able to help me or even read the map very well, even if it was in Chinese…

When I arrived at the Peacefest site on the mountain late Friday night, things were a little too quiet and low-key, with an audience of a handful of people. As it turned out, and I only found out from organizers afterwards, there’d been on Friday night what was described as a “complete meltdown,” of everything going wrong that could go wrong. The tents arrived late, few vendors showed, and most of the bands were running late, too. Then, legendary Aboriginal singer Kimbo – the main act — showed up to perform, but his keyboard hadn’t been delivered, due to a few people’s execrable memory lapses (…may I say, wow, what a cockup!). Long-time Peacefest organizer Lynn Miles (a key player in negotiations to secure the site) had suggested to Kimbo that he play on guitar since he’s all about that, too, but sadly Kimbo declined, and soon headed down the mountain. So two or three hundred mostly locals initially came to see Kimbo play on Friday evening, what was supposed to be The Locals’ Night, but word soon spread he wasn’t playing. So that’s why there was only a handful of people by the end of Friday.

The Friday after-party also didn’t really happen as planned, but for me and a bunch of others at least, it still lasted all night long at nearby Coach Allen’s café, which must be one of the most beautiful little café/gardens I’ve ever seen in Taiwan. This guy really has a wonderful sense of design, a rarity in Taiwan. And his ability to whip up something as simple as an egg into a wonderfully tasty affair in the early hours was much appreciated by all the hard-core partiers!

And staying there only costs 350nt/night, about US$10. Next door was another hotel-like guesthouse with more expensive small suites. And the obligatory visit to the public hotsprings is possible, anytime, just next door.

Nevertheless, the music at this year’s Peacefest was by all accounts more “memorable” than ever. In particular, Panafricana shone on Saturday night, Skaraoke rocked us for HOURS at the Saturday after-party that was even “a little too wild” for some (lead organizer Sean Kaiteri said it was “The Best Party Ever at Peacefest”), and Space Funk on Sunday afternoon – all fantastic bands at top form.

I particularly enjoyed Gypsy Jazz and Groove Department as well. Red Cliff’s debut at Peacefest on Sunday afternoon was another highly appreciated act, likened to Neil Young, surely new talent to watch (within a month of arriving in Taiwan, Caleb Cole’s Red Cliff landed a gig at The Riverside Café in Taipei). On the other hand, THC (Taipei Hip Hop Crew), after being one of the most highly anticipated performances, had a rare off-night on Saturday due to technical difficulties, but when they invited a local beat-boxer (Beatbox Taiwan) onstage they gave an incredible performance that blew everybody away. The village children’s choir, which travels and performs internationally, sang three times over the course of the weekend, bringing many to tears to hear such a beautiful thing. Thanks to Father Ding for arranging this wonderful performance.

Matt Nicodemus said of this year’s Peacefest experience, “All three days of the event were better than splendid: gorgeous mountain aboriginal village setting, beautiful, caring people, great music, excellent conversations, wild dancing, and more. My own 45-minute set, next to last in the festival [Thoroughly Modern Dinosaurs], went really well, I thought…with high energy, few forgotten lyrics and missed notes, and wonderful audience singalong to start and finish the performance. As proud members of the Seamster’s Union say, “Sew, sew, sew many thanks” to all of you who organized, supported, performed, volunteered, and otherwise participated in creating one of the best experiences I’ve had in seventeen years on the island. You can be sure that I’ll do everything in my power to be at next year’s Peacefest!”

I volunteered at the Peace Bar all weekend long with Ross Kenneger and Firedancin’ Rae Kelly, and this is where all the action was. Bartending is really the ideal job – you facilitate the good times, you get free drinks, and as a social strategy you meet pretty much everyone at the party. And there were so many entertaining people there to meet: Leah Livingston, Mason Barlow, Matt Nicodemus, Eric Koert, a load of what must be the coolest South Africans EVER, DJ James Ho, all the bands (who get free drinks), plus seeing many old friends who make this beautiful island feel like home.

Another benefit of working at the Peace Bar was the chance to turn everybody on to my new collection of poetry, “The War on Sleep,” selling all 25 copies I’d brought with me. It’s a special Peacefest limited edition, and I chickened out on actually reading it onstage, so here is the piece “PEACEFEST OF YOUR DREAMS”:

PEACEFEST OF YOUR DREAMS
(San Jhan, near Hualien, November 2009)
the sound of a river
the moonglow
in rippling clouds
a never-ending flow
of free speech

he wages war
and wins the peace prize
for depleted uranium,
phosphorus, agent orange,
a stick o’ dynamite

the intelligentsia
goes global again

it’s not a prayer circle,
it’s a peace circle

people are here for peace
they prance around
for 10 minutes
bond with strangers
like we did
when we were kids,
one peace-bus-sized country
until the Church
sold out the jews
to get cash for guns

there are empty shells
who’ve seen all those things
devastation of dreams
devastation of nations
the children + their parents
now no one’s fit to raise them

if we have something
in common
it’s the state is nothing,
the state of nothing

tell me one thing
if you’re a man
doesn’t it matter
if your earth’s in pain?

of course, you’d want
to defend your country

so the soldier goes to war
believing the lies,
then not believing
his bad luck

An estimated 300 foreigners and about as many locals turned out, far below the expected ‘up to 4,000’, which was not good for making dough to cover operating expenses, but nobody seemed to care, since like at all Peacefests, we were all really mingling, foreigners and locals, everybody was making haopengyou: good friends, good times.

Some say the location was too remote, too hard to get to – but then again so was Kunlun Herb Gardens in Taoyuan County, where Peacefest was held for 5 years. Plus this year there was a Peace Bus and advance tickets to make it as convenient as possible– and free entry for all, another first. At the bar, people weren’t actually drinking as hard as might be expected, the “least pissy Peacefest”, Kaiteri remarked. Sure, there were a token jiu guis, (alcohol ghosts), but “they’re sissy fighters,” explained one of their relatives. “They fight all the time amongst themselves, ‘knockin’ blows but not hard, with no power. They can’t even walk properly.”

In fact, the next morning the village police told organizers they were surprised there were “no fights, no accidents, no incidents, no reason at all to be called out that weekend”. Except, that is, for one noise complaint by an older gent above the track with the stage, who said ‘I love the music but I’m sick, please let me rest’ (however he came back down later and was seen dancing his ass off). The noise complaint was referred to local authorities, then somehow to the Hsinchu police, and amazingly the Taipei police acted on it, so far away…

So on Saturday night, about 10:30pm, when Spring Scream co-founder Wade Davis’ band POINT22 (.22) was playing, organizers said 20-25 national police came to say they had orders to “stop the Peacefest”! The village authorities were saying “we don’t want to do this but you have no choice” — they’d received orders from the Taipei police chief to shut the thing down. WADE was told to finish up after another song; however, being the awesome guy he is, the band played on, song after song, finishing the set while negotiations went on. Skaraoke was scheduled to play after that; since “a plan was in place” organizers kept stalling, they said.

Meanwhile, most people had no idea there was a flock of cops there at all. Then a 10-year-old boy from the village, whose parents were Japanese and Taiwanese, “miraculously” appeared and helped translate, putting a good face on the locals’ perspective. Organizer Sean Kaiteri said, “His English was better than mine, almost.”

By this time, Maya the village chief, a local official, Obay, and a mysteriously helpful local, Ayo, had shown up to help field these police queries. Basically, they told the police, “We’re aboriginals, we all have agreed to this peaceful event taking place, and who are you [the police] to say what goes on here?” Kaiteri said, “They took care of everything, and the police never came back again. They left about midnight, and at 1 a.m. called Ayo to check to see if everything was all right.”

One may ask, how can event like this take place? Well, every year many people volunteer so much of their time and energy. There was a large crew of at least a dozen core organizers this time, working together, at times even overlooking some personal differences. Why? Because we all believe in the Peacefest, in the amazing power it has to bring us all together, for a good cause — not only peace in the world but to take part in an exciting, live and creative experiment in cross-cultural and world understanding. Through Peacefest, we get a deeper appreciation of Taiwan, its people and stunning natural beauty.