Since its first edition in 1998, the Rainforest World Music Festival has grown from a modest local event into one of the most respected world-music festivals on the international circuit, drawing musicians from every continent to perform alongside Sarawak's own indigenous artists. It's held annually at the Sarawak Cultural Village, with the forested slopes of Mount Santubong as a backdrop few festival stages anywhere can match.
The format sets it apart from a typical music festival: daytime workshops let artists from wildly different traditions — a Sami joik singer, an Iban sape player, a West African griot — jam together in ways that rarely happen anywhere else, often producing the festival's most memorable moments long before the evening's main stage sets begin.
Evenings move to two main stages for full performances, but it's the intimacy of the daytime workshops, held inside the Cultural Village's traditional houses, that regulars keep coming back for. For visitors, RWMF weekend is easily one of the best times of year to be in Kuching — book accommodation early, as the whole city fills up.