Meditating in the mud - Photo, Jared Bloch
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Natural skin defoliation? Spiritual cleansing? Or just plain dirty fun? According to one young mud bather interviewed by GenevaLunch, “It’s just mud. That’s all.”
Paleo revelers were invited to take a dip in a mud pool set up in the center of the Mangroove art installation. Mangroove, a virtual swamp of passageways constructed from lengths of mangrove limbs, is a joint project between Paleo and the Haute ecole spécialisée de Suisse occidentale (HES) (University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland).
Santigold brings Brooklyn to Paleo
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Not Fancy but Funky, Funny, and Fun. This was a summary of the Santigold show Saturday night at Paleo.
Santigold, a Brooklyn, New York native, has discovered what those other kings of kitsch from the borough, the Beastie Boys, found out 20 years ago; chutzpah is cooler than gangsta’.
Private banker by day, Hip Hop fan by night arriving at Paleo
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Amidst Paleo’s 35,000 concert goers on Friday, I met a private banker who had come straight to the festival from the Geneva airport, hoping to catch some of the Hip Hop acts.
“In fact, I was hoping to see NTM [the French rap group Nic Ta Mere] but the lead singer is still under arrest, so they are cancelled,” the Swiss banker, Damian told me.
Damian, who lived and worked in India, was upbeat when I shared with him the lineup for the evening including a Bhangra performance and South African Hip Hop.
Achanak welcomed concert-goers on Friday night with their dance-friendly mix of Bhangra and electro music.
Achanak's irresistable dance rhythms - photo, Jared Bloch
Unbridled energy with La Pulquería at Paleo 09 © Paleo Festival 2009
Paleo Festival Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The crowd at Paleo couldn’t keep up with La Pulqueria Friday 24 July. The energy level on the stage was reminiscent of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern – well, when it works – and lead singer Huracán Romántica exhorted the crowd in very passable French to dance, to DANCE. He even went into the crowd and gave people liberal shots of tequila from a bottle in an effort to get them fired up.
Paleo cup washing operation. © Paleo Festival Nyon 2009
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Last year, festival-goers to the Paleo Festival Nyon discarded 1.2 million plastic cups in six days. Drinks, hot and cold were sold in cups that ended up in the garbage, or more likely on the ground. The festival’s organizers decided that things had to change.
Enter Ecocup, a French company. For the 2009 edition of Paleo, Ecocup is supplying the festival’s 52 bars with 100,000 clean, reusable, plastic cups a day with the Paleo logo on them. When you buy a drink at Paleo this year, you pay a CHF2 deposit on the cup, returnable at any of the bars. Observant visitors will see some of the 80 workers, most of them part of the Paleo volunteer workforce, processing the cups on the way in on the left, about 100 metres before the main entrance.
GenevaLunch spoke to Ecocup’s David Arnaud Friday 24 July.
Paleo crowd arriving on Thursday evening - Photo, Jared Bloch
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Fans enjoyed unexpectedly sunny weather Thursday evening at Paleo, in spite of intermittent showers earlier in the day. Apart from a few soggy patches at the concert sites, shows went on without a hitch, and the extra plastic sacs and rain gear packed in, went unused.
Mexican virtuosos Rodrigo and Gabriela set the tone for the evening, with a near hour-long guitar duel featuring their own material as well as covers of “Stairway to Heaven,” and “Oye Como Va.” See GL’s Paleo Photo Album
A passageway to India via Nyon - Photo Jared Bloch
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - If your vacation itinerary doesn’t include a trip to India this year, consider a visit to the Paleo Festival. As part of its offerings, the Nyon based festival is highlighting Indian culture, music, crafts and food this year.
For your passage to India, take the train to Nyon and then the local train. Direction: St Cergue (see GL tips in ”Practical guide to Nyon’s Paleo Festival,” and see GL’s Paleo Photo Album).
The crowd arriving in Nyon on the 17:00 train on Wednesday left no doubt about the tremendous following Paleo has accrued during the past 30 years. In addition to the range of Indian musicians performing on Wednesday 23 July, an array of musical talent from pop/rock dance favorites Franz Ferdinand, to Bonaparte, billed as an “international cabaret burlesque rock show,” and Quebecois Chanteuse Pascale Picard, was on display.
Paleo crowd, 2009
What it is: The largest outdoor music festival in Switzerland, started in 1976, with over 4.3 million concert-goers since then. In 2008, the audience was 227,000 strong, and there were 146 performances on six stages.
Volunteers, all 4,062 of them, helped to make the experience a great one for all. According to a survey in 2008, 59 percent of concert-goers came from the Lake Geneva region.
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Chelsea succeeded in their attempts to reduce the punishments against Didier Drogba and Jose Bosingwa at a closed-door hearing before the UEFA (European football federation) appeals body. Their suspensions were for aggressive attacks on Norwegian referee Tom Henning Ovrebo after they were eliminated in the semi-finals of the Champions League against Barcelona. Drogba’s suspension was reduced from four to three matches, Bosingwa’s from three to two.
