BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – ONE of the largest crowds ever in the history of the St. Kitts Music Festival turned out to see the performance of Damian 'Jr. Gong' Marley and other scheduled acts for night two (June 29) of the St. Kitts Music Festival Sweet 16 celebration.
Along with the music of reggae veteran of Bob Marley's offspring, Morgan Heritage, Courtney Pine, Lovindeer, Eric Donaldson, I-Octane and Popcaan also performed for their fans.
The artistes’ selections for the night were a combination of old school reggae, jazz, dancehall and the new reggae music that is currently taking over.
Eric Donaldson - many know his songs ‘Land of my birth’, ‘Lonely Nights’ and ‘Rock me gently’ – raised the vibes with a tune that went down well with the crowd - ‘Miserable woman’.
Lovindeer pointed out at the Music Festival press conference the importance of reggae music, and talked of producing music that years later is still a favorite among many and would still keep the artiste in demand.
He said, however, there is a time when some persons are not in the mood for the conscious reggae and would enjoy relaxing to some dancehall music from fellow festival artist Popcaan.
Lovindeer kept the crowd’s interest with his tunes ‘One day Christian’ and ‘Wild Gilbert’ while Jazz artiste Courtney Pine was eclectic.
It was an honour for the accomplished jazz musician Pine to perform at the Festival. He stated at the press conference that he was half Kittitian because he was always in the country and that he had married a Kittitian.
His selection of musical pieces produced a mellow vibe for the appreciative audience.
However, when it came to Popcaan’s performance, some of the persons in the audience were not so appreciative.
In fact, they commented that he needed more experience in stage performance and thought that he sounded extremely different from his CD but many other young persons sang word for word with the artiste who is in his early 20’s.
Some of the songs he performed were ‘Protect me’, ‘Fake friends’, ‘Sell we out’ and ‘Clarks’ which was originally done by his mentor, the imprisoned Vybz Kartel.
He also performed ‘Ravin’, ‘Only Man She Want’ and ended his set with ‘Party Shot’.
Another one of the younger performers was I-Octane, who decided to serenade a young lady from the crowd onstage.
The young lady appeared to be very excited as she followed the instructions of the artiste who advised her to rub him down and to ‘dance on him’.
There were also mixed feelings about his performance as he sang ‘My Life’, ‘Who Wanna see I fall’ and another of his more popular tunes ‘Lose A Friend’.
A performance which had great reviews was that of Morgan Heritage who, each time they perform in the Federation, never seem to disappoint.
The Royal family of reggae began performing at 12:10 a.m. and lasted for an hour entering the stage with ‘Don’t haffi dred’ and followed by ‘A man is still a man’.
Some of the other hits they performed were ‘Down by the River’, ‘She’s still loving me’, ‘Best Friend’ before ending their thrilling performance with ‘Tell me how come’.
When it was now time for Marley to perform many persons made their way as close to the stage as possible, and it was pure energy from then on.
Along with some of his recent tracks, ‘Set up shop’, he also performed songs from Distant Relatives - an album he did with US Rapper Nas and performed ‘Dispear’, ‘Promise Land’ and ‘Sabali’.
He also performed past songs ‘Ambition’, ‘Road to Zion’, ‘Beautiful’, ‘There for you’ and ‘Hey Girl’.
‘Love and Inity’, which is one of his earliest works, was also featured last night and loud roars came when he asked if there were any Bob Marley fans in the audience.
He whined down his set with some of his father’s songs ‘No More Trouble’, ‘War’ and his version of ‘Exodus’ which he called ‘Move’.
He did so without missing a beat and maintaining the same high energy with which entered the stage. His performance lasted for an hour.
Marley did not disappoint his fans. Most of them had fallen in love with his most recent hit ‘Affairs of the Heart’ and sang word for word along with the artiste as he performed.
The curtains on Night two came down at 3:47 a.m. and patrons are only several hours away from the final staging of this year’s festival which features Omarion, Toni Braxton, the Liamuiga Project and Roberta Flack.
