Tag Archives: people

I love Bluesfest! Byron Bay Bluesfest, the annual five-day Easter long-weekend festival of blues and roots music from around the world, always includes a line-up of interesting international visitors. Some are big names that take me back to my youth (see, for example: Bring on the Big Names; The Soundtrack of my Youth; Musical Name-Dropping; The […]

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There is nothing quite like a Māori haka to get your festival day started! (Double click for: Māmā Mihirangi & The Māreikura – E-Te-Ariki) The music clip attached is a prayer: E te Ariki – “Lord”, but the Aotearoa (NZ) Māori artists and activists Māmā Mihirangi & The Māreikura had started the set – first up on the […]

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Incredible India! That’s how the Government of India has marketed its tourism campaigns since 2002, and it is not wrong. Incredible! Defined as: 1) impossible to believe, improbable, inconceivable, preposterous, implausible, unimaginable, or 2) difficult to believe; extraordinary, wonderful, marvellous, amazing, astonishing, astounding, awe-inspiring, awesome, extraordinary, fabulous. I think the campaign was intended to build […]

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If I had to choose one word to describe the Mursi people of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, I’d have to say “proud”. There are roughly 7,500 pastoralist Nilo-Saharan Mursi living across approximately 1900 square kilometres of semi-arid land in an isolated corner of southwestern Ethiopia, close to the border with South Sudan. A tall, good-looking people, […]

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Kumbh Melas are among the largest religious gatherings in the world. According to the BBC News, which published pictures of the 2001 Allahabad Kumbh Mela taken from space, that particular mela was “probably the largest human gathering in history”. The more recent mela in Allahabad (Prayagraj) in 2013 attracted an estimated 120 million devotees over […]

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