May 1 brought a festival with a difference to Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD, as a diverse roster of bands — including the Strokes, Girl Talk, Cold War Kids, Lupe Fiasco, and Crystal Castles — came together to celebrate music in an eco-conscious fashion.

Organized by the DC-based Sweetgreen group, the Sweetlife Festival put the spotlight on organic and locally sourced foods, healthy living, and environmental awareness. The carbon-neutral event drew a huge crowd that remained ecstatic despite intermittent rain, aware, most likely, that the precipitation was as good for the earth as the forward-thinking practices the festival endorsed. Or perhaps everyone was just blissed out on the consistently solid performances from everyone on the bill. [Photos by Gabriela Filasky]

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More than 500 artists, with 56 bands from 27 countries over four days. That’s WOMADelaide, the annual world music festival held in Adelaide’s botanical gardens over the Labour day long weekend, this year from Friday March 5 to Monday March 8.

Every year someone I know makes the trip, and afterwards, every year I have to listen to them telling me how amazing it was. The new sounds they heard, bands they discovered, all the cool stuff they got up to and so on. It’s become really annoying. That’s why this year, I’m going.

WOMADelaide has been going since 1992, and this years’ line-up features the Ethopian music ensemble the Éthiopiques, Ravi Shankar and Anoushka Shankar, The Buena Vista Social Club’s Eliades Ochoa, Spain’s Ojos de Brujo, Xavier Rudd and Izintaba plus many more.

The only drawback is that there’s no camping onsite for anyone travelling from interstate, but I organised my own accommodation and it wasn’t that hard or expensive. Come on, Adelaide’s a decent city, sort of like Melbourne’s more adorable but less cultured younger brother.

Other than music, there’s workshops, cooking classes, a kid-zone, over a 100 food craft stalls, and a circus-themed parade. I’m a sucker for anything to do with the circus, but I’ll be too busy with the music to check out any of the other stuff. Someone must be interested though, otherwise they wouldn’t bother.

Passes for each night, or day and night, three and four day passes are all still available, but have sold out in the past. There’s also a festival compilation CD around if you want to taste before you commit.

Attending Glastonbury festival was a defining moment for me. I got to experience some great artists including Leonard Cohen, Santogold, The Raconteurs and Lost At E Minor favourites Yeasayer. And while all the music was phenomenal, the most fantastic things you will hear at this festival are the conversations that float across the stinking quagmire. From the man talking about his first encounter with hommus at lunchtime, to the two ladies who wondered what would happen if you fell into the hole that serves as your toilet for five days: ‘would you die?’, she asked her friend. For me, the most beautiful sound I heard all weekend came from the young men in the tent adjacent to mine. In the late hours of the night, they sat around a fire, listening to their Kings of Leon CD. Unaware that I lay awake, they crooned softly, their voices a lullaby through the freezing air.

Film Festivals are the antidote to mainstream cinema. Gone are the predictable plotlines, thirty minutes of previews and superstar actors. Instead, there is real variety and undiscovered talent throughout the categories that include the official competition, world cinema, Australian films, documentaries, shorts and others. Inspiring, insightful and confronting, these films attack many contemporary issues head-on. While some of the features can be somewhat questionable in quality or indecipherable, the Sydney International Film Festival, which runs until June 22, features films that each push some boundary or are in some way revolutionary. Here are some highlights so far.
Choke
Based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk who also wrote ‘Fight Club’, this is a hilarious, confronting and very strange feature. The truly bizarre situations and characters invented by Palahniuk are engrossing to the end. The black humour involves some of the funniest scenes I’ve ever seen, but it does wane in places. The acting is superb, especially from Sam Rockwell as the lead and Anjelica Huston as his mother. Some key elements of the book are glossed over, but that often happens due to the constraints of film. Really there is not too much more that can be said about a picture which features a sex-addict who fakes choking in restaurants to benefit from the generosity of the wealthy middle class, in order to support his mother who has ended up in a hospice for the insane.

Andalucia
More like a song or a poem than a film for its whimsical beauty, this French offering follows Yacine through Paris as he bounds through life, stopping to appreciate whatever grabs his attention. The brilliant cinematography displays what he has become enraptured with in such beauty that it is easy to fall under the same spell. The intense visual tone is set by a gripping beginning that has Yacine working with children and everyone covered in paint. The film is dominated by a nervous energy that has Yacine bouncing around between situations and characters, pausing to experience them then quickly moving on. He visits family, runs into old friends, parties with a hip-hop star and ends up in a period film. It is a wonderful portrait of a vibrant character struggling to make sense of the world.

Reel Shorts
A collection of short films under forty minutes from around the world of varying subject matter and tone, that will sadly be seldom seen since alone they are too short for television or a feature film. The highlight was ‘Kids + Money’ from America, documenting how important fashion and money are to identities. The skewed views of these Californian teenagers were both scary and hilarious. ’52 Percent’ from Poland was a brutal look at the punishing physical regime a young girl puts herself through to length her legs by 0.4 percent in order to be accepted into a ballet school, while ‘Water Boy’ from Myanmar was a honest and shocking look at a young boy working too hard for a pittance.

Sam Sparro has been causing quite the buzz in the UK with his top five album debut, heavy BBC Radio 1 airplay, and a big thumbs-up from Mark Ronson (who brought him on stage recently at the Coachella Festival) and Chaka Khan (‘Damn, that white boy can sing’). Sitting somewhere between Prince and Stevie Wonder, Hot Chip and Basement Jaxx, the 25 year-old creates ‘must-spin’ singles. And the guy has serious soul. Sparro has also mastered the art of melody and knows a killer chorus when he hears one. Just listen to the sublime new single Black and Gold for proof.

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Walking through the fringes of San Francisco’s financial district on a Sunday evening, hearing the unmistakable thumping bass of a dance party was a welcome surprise.Following the music through the concrete corridors, I ended up at the ninth annual How Weird Street Faire, an ‘experiment in creating peace’ and sharing art and celebration. The festival consumed seven blocks in downtown San Francisco with crazily dressed punters dancing, drinking and hugging to the tune of DJ beats. Unexpected, and a great surprise.