The gentle hum of Busman’s Holiday’s guitar strings danced through the Buskirk-Chumley Theater on Thursday night, kicking off the first night of the Lotus World Music & Arts Festival.
Spanning four days, the festival brought over 40 performances to downtown Bloomington, inviting the Americana brother duo, Addison and Lewis Rogers, in Busman’s Holiday to kick off the 33rd annual edition of the festival.
Launched by rock musician James Combs, classically trained musician Shahyar Daneshgar and former booking agent Lee Williams, the first annual Lotus Festival was held in 1994, limited to only three small venues downtown and had an attendance of about 800 people.
Since then, the festival has expanded to feature six venues, drawing crowds of around 12,000 attendees from around the world.
Visiting the festival as an attendee Friday night, rather than in his official capacity as a co-founder, Daneshgar found himself at the Arts Village stage Friday evening, watching the Traditional Arts Indiana Heritage Fellowship Awards.
No longer involved in the months of planning required to organize the Lotus Festival, Daneshgar reflected on the countless hours he spent birthing the festival with Combs and Williams in the late 1990s.
“I, myself, performed for three, four years,” Daneshgar said. “After that, I said, ‘Let’s have other artists coming here.’ I brought a couple of really top-notch artists from Central Asia, and so it was really successful.”
Daneshgar stepped back from his roles within the festival as performer and planner in the early 2000s and retired from his role as a faculty member at Indiana University’s School of Global and International Studies in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies in 2024.
Sitting in the Arts Village next to the stage Friday night, booths featuring artistry from different cultures and traditions lined up next to the courthouse. Within the array of booths, a coil spring, an air-brushed paint bucket full of lollipops and a posterboard with a picture of a lowrider car sat on display.
Manning the table was Anjelica Soto and Sherwin Underwood, members of the Hop Spot Crew, Inc. from Fort Wayne, Indiana. The nonprofit crew celebrates lowrider car culture to uplift their community, mentor youth through creative programs and raise support for local charitable causes. Lowrider cars are cars modified with lower suspension, hydraulics and typically painted vibrant colors.
Soto said the Hop Spot Crew was invited to the Lotus Festival as nontraditional artists, with the organizers wanting to feature diverse art forms for the global music and arts festival.
“I feel like I didn’t deserve to be chosen to be a part of such an amazing event and to be put into a group with people like some of the people here that are doing weaving,” Soto said. “I’m just so humbled to be able to be part of such an amazing, very inclusive event. I just love it.”
Seventeen musical performances spanned across the six venues Friday night, concluding with Tunisian artist Nour Harkati performing the Saharan Desert Blues genre.
The Lotus Festival continued beginning at noon Saturday with Insun Park & Generals Mask Dance Workshop on Sixth Street.
Insun Park & Generals is a shamanic ritual folk and modern rock band from Korea, with Park being the frontwoman of the band. Park is a master of the Gangnyeong Mask dance, making her one of the few female masters of the male-dominated dance. To become a master, one must go through extensive training and mentorship.
More workshops and musical shorts were performed on Sixth Street and the Arts Village stage throughout the afternoon. Insun Park & Generals took to the Buskirk-Chumley Theater’s stage at 7:30 p.m. to be the second performance at the venue that night.
Park’s set featured the merging of traditional rhythms with modern rock influences, showcasing traditional Korean clothing alongside a drum-heavy rhythm.
Desiring audience participation, Park pointed to attendee Shane Wagner in the crowd, beckoning him forward to “knight” him with an Insun Park & Generals branded hat. This was Wagner’s fourth time attending the Lotus Festival, and he said the hat being placed upon his head was a great start to the night.
“The band was awesome, this was just the cherry on top,” Wagner said. “I love to just stumble upon these incredibly diverse and talented bands from all over the world that play the weirdest things that I would never understand otherwise, and I fall in love with them just like today.”
Nineteen diverse performances graced the venues downtown Saturday, with Italian, Romanian and Moroccan bands showcasing their talents. Alongside this, the Arts Village stage hosted a drag and comedy show.
Behind the scenes, the Lotus Festival was run by volunteers in Lotus-branded green shirts. The ticket booths, informational stations and theater doors were all run by volunteers, ensuring the weekend ran smoothly.
At the informational booth Saturday night from 5 p.m. to midnight, volunteer Nic Peterson sat, sharing information about artists, schedules and locations to passersby.
This was Peterson’s second year volunteering, and he plans to continue in future years.
“I wanted to see it again, but I also just really enjoyed like the whole like just being here in the heart of everything that’s happening and contributing to something that I think is culturally important for a lot of people,” Peterson said.
The final concert of the festival was Sunday evening, ending the weekend and the 33rd annual Lotus Festival with performances from American gospel and blues group Nicki D & the Sisters of Thunder and Italian string group Gadan.
Sitting outside the entrance of the Buskirk-Chumley Theater on Sunday was a memorial for Williams, a festival co-founder. Williams died Jan. 11, 2026, and this year’s festival was the first without him present.
The tribute included an obituary, a posterboard dedicated to his life and a video shown during the final concert, commemorating his large impact on the festival and Bloomington.
“What I really like in him is he had a real open mind to other cultures,” Benoit Borque, William’s friend and colleague, said in the video. “He wanted people to discover those cultures, and I really love that.”
