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It was the blast of the summer |
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Written by Sonia Morgan
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Monday, 01 September 2008 |
Summer officially climaxed with a blast at the annual ‘Summer Blast’ event held at the Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill, last Saturday.
Bringing out a huge crowd of enthusiastic Buju Banton and Beres Hammond supporters, the event delivered what was a good evening of love and togetherness coupled with the overflow of excitement among flag bearing and flag-colors wearing Jamaicans whose Olympic fever was still at high pitch.
Warming up the stage was reggae artiste Pressure, who delivered a fair performance, but did not really get the crowd going until he touched on his insanely popular tune Love and Affection which had the audience rocking and singing along.
A few newbies tried the stage, but none seemed to strike a cord with the audience, who was waiting impatiently to see the headliners for the night, Beres and Buju.
Before that, though, it was time for the sound system and selector to take over the stage. The hype was building and reached a crescendo when Beres, Jamaica’s favorite Lover’s Rock singer took the stage singing his signature hit, What One Dance Can Do, followed closely by She Loves Me Now, Can’t Stop A Man and Step Aside Now. Beres, in hype mode worked the stage giving the audience a show of his physical and lyrical prowess, despite a faulty microphone.
After bigging-up Jamaica and Fort Lauderdale, Beres launched into Falling in Love All Over Again, riling up the crowd who expected to see Buju join him on stage at that moment with his signature rough and rugged voice bursting out “Who seh dat big man don’t cry”, but it didn’t happen.
Frustrated with the faulty cordless mic, Beres tossed it aside and left the stage, much to the confusion of the crowd. But he returned, armed with corded mic and soothed the audience with Honey Comb, Tempted to Touch and Double Trouble. But the real audience action came from his tune, Putting Up a Resistance.
One unexpected hit for the night was the sound system, Sight and Sound. The man dem dun di place. Sight and Sound’s concept is to show video footage while playing music, and when they did, the crowd ate it up. They included some wicked video juggling which sent a strong message about unity in the dancehall music fraternity. But the highpoint for them was the footage of Jamaican athletes led by Usain Bolt dashing across the finish line. The flags went up, the screams went up; it was pandemonium. It was actually the only real Olympic celebration Jamaicans had here.
Buju Banton, the final act, rushed the stage with Me and Unoo… (I can’t write the rest), and then launched into Gold Spoon. The curious thing about his set on this occasion was that it wasn’t chronological. Working with his extensive repertoire, he entwined the different stages of his musical career, working himself into a sweat and giving it to the audience. Though by far not his best performance, as he seemed to be working against the clock, Buju reduced most of his songs to just a few lines, but because of their popularity, the crowd was never lacking excitement.
The duo stepped up the game when Beres came back on the stage to perform the famous collaborations with Buju. What was brilliant about this was when they switched the roles, with Buju singing Beres’ parts and Beres, convincingly, Deejaying Buju’s parts. The crowd, especially those who never saw this before went wild.
Beres exited and Buju completed his set drawing for tunes like Driver, and many of his early hits.
Photos by Uriah Bennett and Damian Woolcock.
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Entertainment 
