ZANABIA Music Festival – Day 3

The Gold Fish Band Day Three is the day ZANABIA quietly saves on its calendar all year. Because this is the only day when the sea exhales its people onto land. No alarms ring. No announcements are made. Yet everyone knows. The sand near the coast grows cool and damp, the air smells faintly of salt and lantern oil, and the ground itself seems to remember the tide. This is the day the fish can walk. By late afternoon, they arrive. Gold-scaled guitarists shimmering like moving coins. A drummer whose fins flick time better than any metronome. A vocalist whose voice sounds like bubbles rising through deep water—soft at first, then impossibly powerful. The Gold Fish Band emerges together, barefoot on land they can only touch once a year. The stage is built low, close to the earth, lined with shallow channels of water so the band never fully dries. Lanterns float instead of hang. The light bends strangely here—reflected, refracted, alive. The audience is unlike any other night of the festival. Sea turtles sit patiently on woven mats. Octopus families occupy the front rows, tentacles neatly folded, clapping in a way that takes some getting used to. Zanabian families arrive early, children on shoulders, elders nodding knowingly. A few human visitors stand quietly at the back, aware they’ve stumbled into something that will be hard to explain later. When the music begins, it doesn’t just travel—it flows. Songs about coral cities, forgotten currents, moonlit trenches. Songs about longing for the surface and relief at returning below. The rhythm makes even land dwellers sway like kelp. Some swear they hear waves inside their chest. For one hour, land and sea forget their boundaries. And then—without drama, without encores—the final note fades. The band bows. The fish smile. The audience stands in reverent silence. One by one, the Gold Fish Band walks back toward the shoreline. No rush. No sadness. Just acceptance. At the water’s edge, they pause, look back once—at lights, applause, and dry ground—and then dive. The sea closes gently behind them. Tomorrow, the festival continues. But Day Three belongs to the ocean.