Saturday, October 10, 2009

Multicultural Food and Music Festival

I just came back from this and feel the need to try and reach EVERYBODY that is local to come and support this event. This is a two day event, it's free and the music was awesome. My son and I arrived when a duet was performing French folk music. We had a great local representation of restaurants including Bear Korean, El Malecon (awesome pupusas), Las Guitarres (bbq'd oysters!), Siam BBQ, and possibly the best corn dog I've ever had. Sukhawat Ali Khan performed with top notch musicians playing the sitar, tablas and digiridoo. There were probably 3 or 4 more acts before we came and one more htat was going to close the show.

The owner of Masala Jack's in Cotati and Zone Music helped with this event. The only thing that was sad to see was the lack of attendance. The festival is FREE people! The restaurants represented offered reasonable prices for lunch and snacks and there were some other very fun vendors selling everything from donkey books (yea you'd have to see them) to jewelry, to other typical festival fare.

I was most impressed at How Sukhawat Ali Khan performed in the midst of maybe 150 people at most. I saw him at the Harmony Festival in 2008 and he played his heart out. That was a full crowd. He played with the same energy and love for the 150 or so people that were gathered sparcely today.

They are going to have another day of this tomorrow, October 11th from 11am to 6pm. The festival is located at Old Redwood and 116, right across the street from Zone Music in Cotati, California.

People, this is a great opportunity to enjoy some music you don't hear everyday. It's also a great FREE thing to do, especially in tough times like these. I feel so proud of the local businesses that helped put this together. My hat goes off to Zone Music and Masala Jack's for doing this. If you don't get out there, then please support these guys:

Zone Music - http://www.zonemusic.com/
Masala Jack's - http://www.yelp.com/biz/masala-jacks-original-good-ol-indian-curryhouse-cotati
Bear Korean - http://www.koreandining.com/
Las Guitarras - http://lasguitarrasdecotati.com/
El Malecon - http://www.yelp.com/biz/el-malecon-rohnert-park