Sumfest: The Post Mortem

Highs

None of the imported acts outshone the best of the local ones. And the best of the local?

Tarrus Riley - composed, confident, tasteful, uplifting, effortless.

Damian Marley - his catalogue of hits did their work as did his great stage presence - Nas helped, but only a little. They gave a sample from the upcoming collaboration Distant Relatives. Let's see how that goes.

Queen Ifrica - authoritative, fluent, righteous, unapologetic and the best act of the entire festival hands down. She did a little preaching in her own down-to-earth rootsy way but carried the crowd with her sincere motherly yet masculine authority. She is Reggae royalty alright.

Elephant Man's MJ tribute - funny and it was supposed to be too!

Ishy

Ne-Yo - exactly what we should expect. Sounded as good as his recordings and even busted Ramping Shop - that was a surprise as was his throwing in 'puuuul uuup' and a 'seleeeeectaaaa'. Clearly he was coached well on impressing the Jamaican audience. Great stuff.

Toni Braxton - did surprisingly well. One was reminded that she really did have a slew of hits. Looked great too.

Lows

Band changes - as usual. Folks started to clap and boo at one point and it took the better part of 20 mins for Ifrica to get on stage. Surely we can do better.

Technical Stupidity - Ne-Yo was embarrassed  when arriving on stage to a non-working mic. Doddered on stage for 5 mins - mic still not working and eventually slinked off after about a total of 10 awkward minutes. Bet that never happened to him before. Folks up front couldn't hear Braxton for much of her performance and she lip synced MJ songs for around for 15 mins as they tried to fix it. Mind you Braxton's singing style obscures the clarity of her words too. Etana went on stage to accompany Braxton but her (Etana) mic didn't work. Had it worked it might have prevented Braxton from embarrassing Etana by refusing to offer her the working mic.

MJ tributes - the Intl Night 1 version had a MJ lookalike who crotch-grabbed during Man in the Mirror - he just didn't get it right. Then Mushette  interviewed him and his baritone never cut it either. Tito was what we expected: not Michael. But we had to get Ed Bartlett and Babsy on stage with others to give plaques and such. Ugh! All that was missing was a wood carving of Jamaica and the line 'thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule...'. Tackyville.

Braxton - 'I love Jamaica, it's my favourite city'. Heh!

Ron Mushette - unquestionably one of the most annoying MCs known to man. He succeeded in filling the gaps created by long band changes and a delayed Ifrica  with noise that made long band changes look good! In which case maybe he did his job. But one wanted nothing more than for him to shut it. So the relief of the following set was multiplied. Reverse psychology maybe?

Otherwise

Getting in and out was easy. Parking was iffy - on Dancehall night several vehicles parked on the sidewalk had their tires punctured. I surmise it was the makeshift parking attendants guaranteeing business for the following nights. Cheeky, if true. Ganja flowed free as the peddlers belted 'high grade!' into the night and their clients enjoyed the fare. The goodness or badness thereof depends on your preference. I don't smoke weed, but at Sumfest - it smokes you.