Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Festival 2009 Singapore Edition

This year’s Worldwide Festival Singapore Edition boasted a stellar line-up which allowed audiences to experience the current climate of global music culture, a pleasure normally experienced passively through internet avenues like YouTube and MySpace. A record collector, label owner and clairvoyant, Gilles Peterson, has the ability to seek out and fuse music from a diverse range of genres – from minimal to electro, tech house to techno [read Time Out Singapore's interviews with the WWF 2009 DJs].

Unfortunately, despite amazing sets from international DJs including Todd Terje (Norway), Alex From Tokyo (France) and funkalicious Mr V (US), we were disappointed that some of our local and regional talents got the short end of the stick. DJ Has, one of Singapore’s most talented DJS and one of the founders of renowned broken-beat and nu-jazz night NuBeats, was scheduled to start performing at 9am. Local percussive collective Bloco Singapura was due for a 7pm start, but was later cancelled to make up for lagging times in the festival’s schedule. In addition to this incongruity, the Worldwide Festival Talent Search winners, Bandung-based group Santamonica, was scheduled to perform at 11am but was also denied its time on stage as well (festival organisers declined to comment).

What happened to our local heroes? In most instances, our local DJs and musicians are sacrificed to make way for the hordes of foreign talent that arrive on our shores each weekend. And as a result, our local acts aren’t given the time of day (or night, depending on what time the party gets started and the response from the crowd). Hopefully Peterson will make good his promise of them playing in the Sète edition of Worldwide Festival in the South of France. The 24-hour festival schedule is definitely an interesting idea, but in this instance, a little too ambitious perhaps?

For the majority who came to see their favourite acts in the heat, their biggest disappointment was the sudden drop in volume on both sound stages; some festival-goers were lamenting the poor sound quality. When approached, organisers attributed the volume reduction to complaints from the Siloso Beach Resort, which is situated directly opposite Café del Mar on Siloso Beach. Thankfully, we Singaporeans are a forgiving and tolerant bunch, and the music was enough to keep a good number of audiences rooted to the stages. Crowd favourites Stereotyp and The Nextmen showed off their technical skills by switching from genre to genre seamlessly. Both acts played simultaneously, switching between dubstep and drum ’n’ bass, and driving the crowd with bass-hungry riddims you couldn’t help but dance to.

Read Time Out Singapore's interviews with the WWF 2009 DJs.

Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Festival 2009 Singapore Edition took place at Café Del Mar, Home, OverEasy, Singapore Art Museum, Velvet Underground, and Zirca Mega Club (7-10 May).