5 Reasons why Le Guess Who? is the best festival in the whole world

During the 11th edition of the Utrecht festival Le Guess Who? (LGW), more than 150 acts from 34 countries found a home in the city of Dom in a long weekend. Fraternisation in listening mastered LGW that may definitely go into the books as the best festival in the whole world. And for these five reasons.

1. The whole world comes to Utrecht

With more than 34 nationalities on stage and thick half of festival-goers coming from even more countries, pretty much the whole world signs present at LGW. From ordinary visitors exploring the city on foot or by rental bike, to the limousines parked in front of the Jacobi Church to bring the ambassadors of Iraq, Yemen and Saudi Arabia to Farida Mohammed's concert.

From across the globe

LGW also gathers musical worlds from across the globe. That means: from vicious Japanese noise to abstract Dutch drone, from heavenly Bulgarian choir singing to rousing afrobeat krautrock from New York. In a world that seems reduced to a pinhead by technological developments, LGW thus brings four days of its own global village. This is a sweet shop as big as a metropolis, whose ultimate strength lies in the richly varied passion for hearing the unprecedented and in the immediate experience of diversity.

The door open

Those who think they know everything these days are snatched from behind the computer or smartphone screen by LGW and find themselves face to face with the sounds of the world; on a silver platter. Living and experiencing is about opening the door, stepping outside and experiencing live. Living and experiencing is also: not wanting what you already know, but taking just that one step towards the other and the other with an open mind, this festival emphasises.

2. The whole world makes itself heard

LGW proudly carries the subtitle 'A Celebration of Sound'. That celebration applies to the acts as much as to the visitors and crew. Rare is the cordiality with which you are welcomed, the attention to detail in the decoration, the presentation of emerging talents alongside juggernauts of names in their stile; as well as niches versus more well-known genres.

Celebration

At LGW, the world comes together to be heard at its best and the festival goes out of its way to make that a celebration. That can manifest itself in silently undergoing the enigma of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares to dreaming away leaning against free jazz noise that Linda Sharrock's band brings about at least as virtuosic. You can also find that in the euphoria of dancing joy at Les Amazons d'Afrique or Amadou & Mariam and in the spell cast by the somewhat mysterious Argentine singer Juana Molina now once sweetly elusive then again seethingly screeching.

3. Tarab

For LGW, for the artists at this festival and just as much for the visitors, music is the first necessity of life. It also forms the heartbeat that runs through the days - everyday days, by the way, for the LGW-er. Its moods therefore range from contemplative calm to blood-serious thoughtfulness and on to intense sadness or exuberant frenzy. LGW manages to keep the balance between them from tipping towards one or the other. Here too, versatility rules. Because: LGW does not care about boxes or labels. See there again: the open view.

Ecstasy

However, one aspect links the absolute best of LGW artists and for that, Arabic has the word 'tarab'. Ranine - the daughter of the Lebanese legend Abdelkarim Shaar - talks about the concept before his performance. Difficult to summarise briefly, tarab is a journey through the totality of emotions, through which the music leads you, all the way to complete ecstasy. And tarab applies to both the musician and the listener.

Tarab is deeply inspired and at the same time supra-subjective. In other words, performers become detached from themselves through years of study and experience and become primarily conduits of sound. These then involuntarily enter the audience directly, his spite often notwithstanding.

Blowing away sense of time and space

Tarab therefore trumps the transporting Shaar when he lifts and blows away sense of time and space in what is only his second concert ever outside Lebanon at the Jacobi Church. Ecstasy also splashes off the stage with Zimbabwean Stella Chiweshe. Her meandering-repetitive mbira patterns show where Steve Reich got the mustard, and she captures sadness, joy and wonder (over bird twittering) in her fabulous vocals.

One organism

Thurston Moore and Han Bennink let tarab steer both their playing past cutting and crunching feedback and fierce blows on the drums and through gentle brushwork to dissonant but sweetly rippling plucking. This is tarab where two top-notch musicians become one organism. The full emotional scale also comes through in the poems that Meredith Graves in her spoken word performance recites. Painful shame, yearning lust, jolly antics and apt observations on a young woman's urbane life mostly find each other already in the short span of just a few of her poetic rollercoaster lines.

Through any armour

Tarab finds perhaps the warmest home at Farida Mohammed who - with the Iraqi Maqam Ensemble - completely leveled dignitaries and LGW-goers alike with her penetrating vocals in a packed Jacobi Church. In it, you can hear the centuries of traditional baggage that provides the maqam with soul in every breath. Even though you may not understand anything she sings, Farida's flawless arrows shoot right through any armour and speak directly volumes. And at several moments during her concert, she herself looks surprised, as if to say: it just happens to me too. Then and there tarab flows profusely and the ecstasy is corresponding.

4. The whole world can be trusted blindly

In the global village you might think you have everything at your fingertips. After all, you can just google everything. Or: find it on Spotify. No. Three times no (there are not even records of Shaar, despite a career spanning decades!). Because without LGW, you won't come across many of the names on the programme. Then you have nothing (to look up) either. Now you do and those artists get the warm festival glow beforehand, grabbing interest and fame outside their own circle.

Question marks

For LGW, that's not nearly enough. All that pre-checking might lead to nicely crammed block schedules with hectic walking routes, but that does not seem to be the (only) intention. It's precisely what you don't know that LGW wants to celebrate with you. So five question marks adorn the programme. Figure it out. And you can turn that into a sport an sich. Track down acts' tour plans - see if there is a gap. The rumour and option spam runs overtime on social media. Or you walk in and get really surprised.

Total madness

A question mark is filled with a festive set midway between rock and Malian roots by Amadou & Mariam and the engagingly funny Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals plays an intimate, acoustic show under the symbol. The Residents Bring their theatrical and over-the-top avant-garde rock show to Utrecht and convince completely between total madness and puffy surrealism.

At the conclusion of LGW provides Msfari Zawose for a dazzling marriage of electronic beats and Tanzanian folk music, after which the young Afro-Puertorican rap star Princess Nokia turning her question mark into a fierce and spitting exclamation mark.

Exclamation mark

The lessons the question marks teach are there for the taking. After all: announce The Residents on the LGW programme and their separate show in the Netherlands goes way down. Put them on LGW and tig people hear the incredibly important band for once too - a separate concert they wouldn't have caught otherwise. Plus: if they had only heard the wacky music beforehand, they might have stayed away. Under the question mark, the hall is full before the start. It's called: a win-win situation.

Another lesson: hip-hop at LGW hardly worked in previous years. Announce Princess Nokia, she stands in front of a moderately filled hall. Now it seems like no one wants to miss the final question mark act. But surely the biggest lesson is that the five question marks were a hit five times. So you can trust the LGW world (leaders) blindly. Not a matter of: will be good, but of: ís good. Otherwise it wouldn't be on LGW. With those feathers, the festival doesn't even need to flaunt them beforehand, where big names are concerned. Not even, right.

5. The festival belongs to everyone

LGW is a festival that creates an us-feeling. That cuts across nationalities. Or through: gender and age. And also: without walls between artist and audience. The celebration of tarab, discovery and adventure take centre stage. Bomb- or overcrowded is therefore not an issue to moan about at LGW. If no one can fit more in a room, there is more than enough to experience in the rich programme. The festival deliberately enforces that too; just go on a journey through the world of LGW and step outside your planned paths. There is always an inn with a warm welcome.

The festival of the world

On LGW, complaining Fat Ikke's who whine on social media about "their place" that they feel they have to claim just tough luck. Those few out of thousands of happy visitors have no business there either, literally. After all, they only want to find what they already know and think they are entitled to it (even if they are just late). Of the method: me, here, now, this - loudly (also in terms of the shabby through-the-concert chatterers).

And that is exactly how LGW deliberately (and thankfully) does not work. With full love and power, the festival of the world focuses on the keywords: us, everywhere, then-now-now, all of us - silently and truly listening. That is why LGW is a highly relevant celebration of an often sorely missed sound; hearing the other in fraternal peace.

The best festival, moreover, without a single whimper, because - come to think of it - every concert is of exceptional world class. Or, to use the motto - which sums up LGW perfectly - of the festival's closing act: "Princess Nokia is sound. It is progression. It is all that I am."