15 november
WELCOME
This year we celebrate the 5th Roof of the World Festival in Khorog, Tajikistan. It’s been a wonderful and yet critical journey, particularly for those many of us who have been involved for the entire time. We learned early to keep pressure on, kept varying and updating the festival themes in order to avoid a festival decline. Therefore, following the successes of our 2008-2011 events, we are gathering our enthusiasm and energy to produce an event that will most certainly be even better than the last one.
As the festival’s popularity is growing, we hope to draw an audience between 10,000 to 13,000 people with music from all over the Pamirs and surrounding regions of Central and South Asia including China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and possibly others.
The festival will last for 4 days over a long weekend, and will feature different events on one small “electric” stage interspersed with other smaller daytime acoustic “unplugged” stages & workshops in different parts of the Khorog Central Park. Additionally the Park and its unique mountain acoustics will be the location for traditional and innovative performances in alternative music, poetry and local crafts.
The festival furthermore, is an example of a strategy for peaceful coexistence and for the prosperity of Central Asian people. Last, but not least, the festival will act as a tool for the revival and preservation of music, arts and cultural traditions of the region and create links between people and lands, cultures and nature.
Additionally the event will showcase eco-energy and related systems (solar cookers, spiral water pumps etc.), delicious traditional food, the prospects of swimming in sacred rivers and hot springs, trekking along shepherds’ ways and hiking to holy lakes.
The event will be on the 13,14,15 and 16th of July will coincide with the summer’s full moon nights so that the valley and our happening will be lit beautifully. On behalf of the RTWF Committee, Organizers, Volunteers, Performers and all others involved: welcome to our 5th Roof of the World festival at the Pamiri Mountain! May love, respect, tolerence, creativity and wisdom, guide us all.
Festival Director
