Festival season is winding down here in Houston, for even though we've had a disturbingly pleasant spring, smothering humidity and temps in the 90s are just around the corner. Houstonians have to squeeze a lot into the month and a half of April and early May so we won't feel quite so guilty about cowering in our air conditioned homes from June to October.
One of the last hurrahs for us is the International Festival. Held downtown near Tranquility Park (except for 2004, when it was disastrously moved to Reliant Stadium), the I-Fest features a different country each year (this year was India, 2006 will be Jamaica), and one large section of the festival is devoted to showcasing food, music, dance, and overpriced merchandise from the featured nation.
Needless to say, if this was all there was to see, the festival wouldn't draw much of a crowd. That's why you can always find a wider variety of food, drink (provided you consider beer, margaritas, and Goya beverages a "wide variety"), and - most of all - music. Last weekend offered zydeco, reggae, folk, country, and various Doobie Brother/ZZ Top clones.
She Who Shall Not Be Named, in case it wasn't obvious by now, is a big music fan. Her appreciation runs across genres, though she seems to share her mother's predilection for female singer-songwriters (looks like the Fear CDs will have to stay in the desk for now). Also, being a toddler, her interest in live music is sparked as much by the sounds as it is with the people up on stage.
Which goes a long way towards explaining her fascination with The Neutral Sisters.
When the two fair-skinned young ladies in Rastafarian red, black, and green skirts got up on stage and started talking to the audience in a heavy Jamaican patois, I thought it was a joke. The Wife and I found ourselves looking around to see if an HBO crew was nearby filming for Da Ali G Show, but they were for real (born in Kenya, raised in London and Jamaica), and their music really wasn't all that bad.
SWSNBN got right up in front, of course, and elicited a smile and a wave from one of the sisters (Kyra, I think). I had just enough time to consider all the action I could be getting from hot bohemian women by hauling my daughter around to live music shows when The Wife pelted me with a plastic cup and ordered asked me to get her another beer.
The Neutral Sisters aren't really my bag (the last reggae album I bought was Mama Africa by Peter Tosh), and music with a "positive message" usually causes me to develop a spontaneous case of IBS, but once you got past the dialect, they were all right. Which leads me to think my kid might have better taste than I originally gave her credit for. That band she liked at the Bluebonnet Festival was pretty good, after all, and she slept right through those stupid hippies and their bullshit "noise orchestra" (also at this year's International Festival).
If only Lilith Fair was still going on. That would be a fine place for my...uh, research.
Did you get a load of Bollywood 101? It was rad! A hop modern indian DJ telling and illustrating the styles of Bollywood films from the 50's to the present was cool enough, but even better were the 100's of people singing along to BOllywood classics. I felt like I was the only one in the crowd that did not know that ________ was the most inspirational male performer of the 1980's. It was like I was on another planet.