The shining surprise of the festival on Friday was Signal Path, whose frontman summed up the scene best by saying: “Let’s take this moment to just look at where we are and the people that are all around us. We got the moon kickin’ and the stars kickin’ and we got this whole desert to ourselves! That doesn’t happen every day, but it’s happening today, and we are very thankful to be here… So let’s make some noise!” If the Chemical Brothers had a full funk band and jammed with Emerson, Lake and Palmer then did some morphing into Moby, you would have an idea of their dance groove sound.

The festival’s headline music act was a treat, Australia’s number one voted male performers of the year, John Butler Trio with their flawless slide guitar blues band. Shamans Dream World Groove Ensemble offered tribal sounds mixed with irresistible dance rhythms.

On Saturday we took some time to attend a harmonic fusion class in a tent with Arguna. After so much great music, what a blast to do a little yowling of our own! Sorry we missed the didgeridu class with Ganga Giri. When Ganga Giri and his Australian posse hit the stage on Saturday, anyone within earshot was whipped into dancing in no time.

On Sunday, the band that had the biggest crowd and was the most entertaining was Spoonfed Tribe from Ft. Worth. They were very percussion heavy and had a great stage show to go with the groove. Then Frequinox started getting a sick funk going, then invited Papa Mali onto the stage with them. The much-anticipated African Showboys filled out the day.

By June Caldwell with assistance (and picture of Sigmnal Path) by Rodger Caldwell