The Jubilee: Rain, fun and very diverse roots music

There are also several smaller stages in town, where some lesser known and often more local (meaning: German) bands are invited to play. I managed only to see two of those, and both of them are very much worth a listen.
The first one was 'Gout d'hier', a band of one Belgian and three Germans (one of them living in France) playing instrumental folk dance music from central Europe. The instruments are accordion, guitar/mandolin, fiddle and guitar/bouzouki - their music is very fresh and they provide enough space for each of the musicians to show their individual talent. This is music where you can listen to for hours - but not only listen to also dance to. Gout d'hier also played for dance in the big dance tent, where dancers can dance to music from all over the world for nearly the whole festival weekend.
The other band was DeReelium from Hanover. Their singer Barbara Steinort did not manage to come to this concert, but the five lads provided a good set of mainly traditional Irish material. With a (mainly) acoustic line up (fiddle, concertina, banjo/German pipes, bodhran/bones and guitar/e-bass) they proof that you do not have to be Irish to play highest quality Irish music.

DeReelium played on Sunday; yet I still need to come back to Saturday night. There was the Bollywood Brass band, a mad band from England. It is quite a big band playing mainly Indian music in a breathtaking brass version with a wild performance. The audience was simply blown away by this party music...
And the party went on later that night with another mad band - this time from Germany. 'Lecker Sachen' combine German language Hip Hop and Pop with traditional mostly Irish music. During the day they have already played their fascinating 'unplugged' set together with the Da Gangsta String trio, bringing classical elements into that unusual mixture. Late night they played plugged - and the audience went wild. Lecker Sachen stated at the end of the night that this had been their craziest gig up to now in their three years career. They are unplugged as well as plugged great fun - you will have a big party with them.

Sunday provided again lots of music and fun, leading into the special final concert, starting at 6pm, where the whole "surviving" festival visitors come together to finish the weekend Here many of the festival bands are playing again for a short set - everybody in the large audience always finds at this concert some groups they have not seen at the festival before. And at that point of the festival it is also time to talk of the next one, where the secret of next year's specials are exposed. In 2001 (first weekend of July, as always) the instrument special features the clarinet, the country special are the Lesser Antilles, and there will be a new regional special introduced, starting next year with Bavaria. And as said - it is not only the music that matters, but first of all the unique atmosphere of this festival - and that alone is always worth for visiting the festival.