Major Lazer + Friends
Holiday Concert in Kingston
Raise your hands if you like dancehall. Raise them higher if you like dancehall/EDM concerts that start after midnight and go until 3 a.m.
[Hands raise]
Seeing all hands raised, I’d like to tell you about the sweet annual concert that Major Lazer puts on at Mas Camp with a variety of other Jamaican and West Indian EDM/dancehall groups.
Major Lazer
Major Lazer is a group of three electronic music DJs (Diplo, Walshy Fire, and Jillionaire) with roots in the American South, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago. They produce hits that pull Jamaican musical styles like dancehall, reggae, ska, and soca into catchy electronic music and dance videos like “Lean On,” “Cold Water,” and “Light It Up.”
“Lean On” has 1.8 billion views on YouTube and is the most played song in the history of Spotify. The music is catchy, but the real reason to watch these videos is the sweet dancing.
Get Free and the Spirit of Jamaica
While “Lean On” is the more famous song, I recommend you check out the video below for “Get Free”:
Both Kate and I watched this video and thought: “Wow. What a beautiful encapsulation of the spirit and beauty of this island.” This video shows the vital, live and let live, celebratory, wry spirit of Jamaica in a way that is hard to communicate.
“Get Free” captures the lyric beauty that permeates Jamaica as well as the souls of its people. We treasure our time here and this video shows why.
The Concert at Mas Camp
We arrived to the concert late. The opening act was supposed to start at 9 p.m. and the group left our apartment complex around 10:30 p.m. By the time we showed up around 11, the opening act had just started and the whole concert was running about 90 mins late.
Even at 11, Mas Camp had not yet filled up with people and the vibe was generally relaxed. People were standing in groups chatting, drinking cans of beer, sipping Bacardi mixed drinks, and generally swaying to the opening DJs while clouds of herbal smoke wafted across the outdoor venue.
Major Lazer started a bit after 12.30 a.m. as Diplo, Walshy Fire, and Jillionaire came out in school uniforms with khaki shorts, backpacks, and nerdy hats. By that time the crowd had filled in and people were feeling a bit more festive. Part of this may be because one of the guys in my group was dressed in a Santa costume:
After the opening number, Major Lazer shot towels into the crowd, Diplo jumped off the stage in a hamster ball, and the concert paraded through dancehall and reggae hits with guest performers like Sean Paul, Chronixx, Proteje.
By the time it was over at 3 a.m., we were happy that entrepreneurial folks had set up grills all across the parking lot. Nothing is better than post-concert jerk chicken and CranWATA.
Don’t you want to come down to Kingston for the concert next year?
Links to Music Videos
And finally a very regionally-appropriate Christmas song:
