Bluesfest is going great!

It’s at a new venue and this venue has a lot of pluses, such as a larger site, but this same plus means more walking to get everywhere:  volunteer village, as they’ve called the place where volunteers must sign in every time they come on the site is miles and miles away (after all, the paying public shouldn’t have to walk all the way to the end of the earth to get to the stage they need, I understand that).  At the old venue, when you got your meal break, you could walk to the meal place, get your food and be ready to return to your shift in 15 minutes, now you need about 12 minutes for the round trip commute to the village alone.

I’m having fun though, as usual.  It’s somewhat incongruous that someone who dislikes the smell and taste of beer would voluntarily work at the beer tent (we do sell some non alcoholic beverages too), but I do it for the customers and the fast pace (I volunteer for the free access).  Beverage purchasers are generally a very jovial bunch, usually polite and good tippers (no, we don’t keep the tips).  You meet a wide range of people and some get all passionate about the performer they’ve come to see–it’s just great!

It’s not all volunteering though; I did see Femi Kuti with my sister last Friday.  Mr. Kuti is a Nigerian artist whose father, Fela, is credited as being one of the founders of afro-beat (he was rather fond of weed too, by all accounts).  I brought my trusty chair to this concert but the bunch of people standing in front of me quickly tipped me off to the fact that this would not be the sort of concert where you sit listen:  to fully enjoy this concert you better be ready to get up and dance!  So, the chair was abandoned and the dancing soon commmenced.

So did the weed smoking.  However, in another uncharacteristic move, I gravitated toward the weed smokers because weed creates smoke, and smoke repels MOSQUITOES!  And man were the mosquitoes out with a vengeance that night!  So even though I had to experience having an insane dreadlocked woman leaping into me (she was feeling the music) so often that eventually one of her dreads ended up in my mouth (she got the message that I was sick of her leaping about when I used my fist to shove her away–it sounds worse on the internet; I promise you she didn’t fall, nor was she hurt), I had a good time.

The man:

I like wearing this shirt to Nigerian events because of the subtle green and white stripes:

The owner of the not so tasty dreads:

The over six foot tall human mosquito repellant (not photographed: his smoke producing instrument):

Filed under: Adventure, Mundane by jummy