Who is popular today?

NIGEL CAMPBELL
The consensus among the 5,000 crowd at Pigeon Island National Landmark for the third night of the St Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival, May 12, was not so much how great Caribbean music was this night, but how great was this traffic to leave this venue that night.
The festival was back to its maximal best as the weekend shows increased in popularity, with reported sold-out VIP experiences.
The ripple effect of this grandeur was the logistical nightmare of moving too many people in and out. But this was relieved, temporarily, by the music, reggae, soca and dancehall, that delivered potential lasting memories.
After an hour of DJ music by the local favourite, DJ Hollywood HP, The Ark Band, a reggae band from Ohio, formed by two brothers from St Lucia, opened the night, which also featured soca royalty and Road March family Ian "Bunji Garlin" Alvarez and Fay Ann Lyons, and Gargamel himself, Buju Banton.
[caption id="attachment_1016345" align="alignnone" width="682"] Buju Banton with his trademark hoarse voice sang the hits: Hills and Valleys, Untold Stories, Wanna Be Loved, and more.[/caption]
The Bobb brothers, Terry and Eustace, helmed this band, which delivered non-stop originals with a few covers that kept the growing crowd entertained.
The anticipation for the main headliners was palpable. The music was well played, but the crowd response was muted.
How to build audience reaction beyond social media popularity is anyone's guess. Playing live and often is one suggestion that works in theory and in practise. The band admitted St Lucia was the one place it had not played in its 30-plus year career. Homecoming was too long delayed. It made up for that amazingly, with a novel tune, a “country reggae” jam, that had the crowd singing lustily: “I'm a proud Lucian and I am proud of where I'm from.”
St Lucia has this peculiar penchant for country music here in the Caribbean. It worked well.
The MCs made a statement before the arrival of the Viking and viqueen: “St Lucia shares a couple things with the rest of the Caribbean; cricket and carnival and soca.”
The community, the commonality of our histories, DNA and cultures, mean that celebration is not unique from island to island. When Caribbean people want to party, they will.
Bunji and Fay Ann had arrived to turn up the energy. Caribbean Fusion night of the festival was now a hard fete.
Bunji’s words to the masses: “I ain’t come here for no stand up/I come to party with meh hand up / So all soca people put yuh two hand in the air,” One hundred and 50 beats per minute from that point on. Pace and power soca.
[caption id="attachment_1016346" align="alignnone" width="681"] Bunji Garlin opened his set with Hard Fete. -[/caption]
Yet it was noticeable that this wasn’t a Trini fete vibe of "mash up the place.” Fay Ann, ever the improviser, sensing a fluctuation in the energy, went off-script and told the band to play “songs the crowd don't know,” an old trick she uses to wake up a crowd that is not giving 100 per cent to their exhortations.
Popular song covers moved the crowd; soca was no longer the main jam, and reggae, zouk and even country entered the fray. The crowd sang along a capella to the Shania Twain song, Still The One, along with some rock and pop, and they sang loudly. A cover of the Allison Hinds hit Togetherness increased the energy even more.
Fay Ann, the ultimate performer, had the audience back. She took over the middle of the set with Bunji as dancing partner and ad-lib vocal supporter, but he would close the show with hits. Differentology had the crowd singing by themselves – Bunji didn't need to join in. Truck On D Road and Famalay too.
The lyrical gymnastics of The Struggle showed that Fay Ann is up to par to spit those 16-note rhymes and raps. There was sweat and breathlessness at midnight as they closed their set.
Buju Banton was next in the house. At 12.40 am he began with Destiny, and it was the culmination of a development of this themed-night festival that shows potential to be the number-one music festival in the Caribbean. Lion of Judah flags waving, Buju was dancing like a man possessed, all loose-limbed, locks flying, the power of the music moving him. His trademark hoarse voice singing the hits: Hills and Valleys, Untold Stories, Wanna Be Loved, and more. It was Buju as audiences know him.
Trinidad saw him earlier in May, but his return to St Lucia was many years longer. The band was sounding tight, and this combination or hits and musicianship worked to elevate his performance. New songs were included that, happily, did not leave the audience in awe. One new tune was High Life, a recorded duet with rapper Snoop Dogg, celebrating the merits of marijuana, herb, weed, after being illegal until recently in the Caribbean. Ironically, there was no intense smell of weed in the park that evening, But the message was received.
This St Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival is a show of stars. Like many other music festivals in the Caribbean, people want that, even demand it for success.
The dynamic of festivals means that bands and artists will need to get their acts together. Festival organisers also have to plan for the experience beyond the stage. With the following two nights, World Beats and The Ultimate Celebration, featuring the superstars of Afrobeats and Kassav, and Sting and Shaggy respectively, the measurement of the success of the renewed festival will be more than the number of tourists coming to St Lucia, but the feedback from everyone on how the experience made them feel. A look at World Beat night is next tomorrow.
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