Dún Laoghaire's Festival of World Cultures drew up to 100,000 people to see its 70 acts. Angela Long picks her favourites.

Drums set the beat of the success of the Festival of World Cultures in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, at the weekend. Crowds of up to 100,000 people were in the harbour town on Saturday and Sunday for the kaleidoscope of entertainment, food and crafts from around the world. There was much on offer for fans of musical diversity, but the biggest impacts were from Camut Band, a dance and percussion group from Barcelona, and the Dhol Foundation, 10 musicians from Britain whose performance is based on the traditional Punjabi dhol drum.

Camut Band

Pavilion Theatre

The Camut Band were one of the few of of the festival's 70 acts that were not free, but nobody would have begrudged buying a ticket for this extraordinary group of six dancers and drummers, with no small dose of comedy mixed in. The group came to Dún Laoghaire after rave reviews in Edinburgh. Their show starts simply, with the sound of slow footsteps echoing through the theatre. Then it explodes into 90 minutes of exhilarating tap dance and drumming that scarcely seems to leave the troupe in a sweat. A highlight is the sand dance by Guillem Alonso, looking barely old enough to be out at night. He has a formidable CV, however, and this number, using a shallow sandbox and often sounding like a DJ scratching with records, displays his virtuosity. The humorous clapping interaction between the audience and Camut front man Toni Español was a clever and lively play on the band's motto, Life is Rhythm.

The Dhol Foundation

Harbour Plaza

This reviewer has to declare an interest in this free event, having been a volunteer helper. That should not prevent it being lauded, however, as it was a spectacular success, with more than 1,000 people crowding in to watch. The 10-man group focuses on the sound of the dhol drums, which, at 15 kilograms, are large enough to have to be strapped to their players.

Five of them play this, packing an aural punch, with backing on keyboards, guitar, cymbals, percussion and smaller drums, such as the tabla. The drums provide an irresistible beat, judging by the alacrity with which the crowd started dancing. The sound system provided backing with songs by popular Punjabi artists, which gave a vocal support to the musicians. The effect was stunning. The leader and chief dhol-player is Johnny Kalsi, whose passion drives the performance.

Los de Abajo

Harbour Plaza

This 10-piece from Mexico, who style their music "tropipunk", succeeded the Dhols - and drew an even bigger crowd. With vocals, saxophone, trumpet, percussion, keyboards and a supercharged lead singer all in constant motion, their energy was powerful. At times they seemed like a Latino version of the English group Madness, and their music has been called a fusion of just about everything, starting with Latin ska.

But their social message - justice for the millions of poor in their country, particularly the state of Chiapas - is serious. When the electricity supply gave out 50 minutes into their performance they handled the adversity well, one of the trumpeters stepping in to the breach while emergency repairs were made.

Nusantara

Town Hall

The festival kicked off with this elegant and crowd-pleasing dance troupe from South-East Asia. Its seven members perform dances from the Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnic communities, as well as some from smaller indigenous tribal groups on the Malaysian archipelago (Nusantara). The nine-piece orchestra did not accompany the dancers during the free lunchtime show, which was an hour-long sample from the full performance at the Pavilion Theatre in the evening. Luckily the taped music was loud and clear, and the smiling dancers, five female and two male, did not miss a beat. Unfortunately there was no elevated platform, and the audience was also on the flat, so the nuances of the footwork were lost to all but the first couple of rows. This did not seem to worry the enthusiastic full-house crowd of about 200 people, however, perhaps because this type of dancing features intricate hand movements.

Arabian Quintet

Walter's

This reviewer could count only four instruments - guitar, violin, percussion and saxophone - but perhaps the explanation was one of the stories that leader Sami Moukaddem was telling, punctuated by a question: "Can you hear me?" The answer was not always for the voice, but the music could be heard fine, despite the adverse conditions of a crowded pub on a Friday night. Sami's guitar segued into traditional Lebanese rhythms, highlighted by Brendan Doyle's saxophone and, on this occasion, with an Irish violinist, Caoidhne Quinlan. That worked sometimes, sometimes not.

Soukous Allstars

People's Park

The sedate Victorian pleasure grounds had never seen anything like the Soukous Allstars. With their synchronised dancing and exciting rhythms - and much thrusting of pelvises and wiggling of hips - it was enough to make the regimented flowers in the beautifully laid beds leap off their stalks and start bopping. Soukous is the party music of the Congo and surrounding countries, and these nine entertainers are from that part of the world but now live in Ireland. Our gain.

Sam Mangwana

Pavilion Theatre

Perhaps some of the crowd at the Dhol Foundation gig trickled up, drained, to see Sam Mangwana, superstar of Afro-Latino music. This might explain a lacklustre first half, in which Mangwana seemed disappointed by the polite Irish audience sitting in orderly rows. The music he and his group perform is aimed at getting people boogieing. They had more success in the second half but only fired up the house with the encore. Mangwana is Congolese by birth but did a couple of songs in Portuguese from his early days: Mi Angola, a plea for an end to the civil strife that tore the country apart for many years, and Antonio, a hymn of celebration for the return of his uncle, who was exiled in the late 1950s. Guitarist Didzi Manjegu was the highlight of the night with his spectacular skill.

Damien Dempsey

Kingston Hotel

The singer-songwriter performed alfresco on the hotel steps. This gave him access to the dinner-barbecue crowd as well as his own audience, so the "venue" was overflowing. But from the audience chants that punctuated his plaintive, pungent, anti-establishment songs he was delivering the goods. That's The Way, It's Important and other songs take on Irish society: the rush to prosperity, those trampled underfoot, the church, the crack, the good but, especially, the bad.