Street Dance on the Waterfront, the main event to celebrate this year’s observance of International Reggae Day, failed to live up to the billing as there were few takers for the event on Saturday night.
Slated to be 10 hours of music, BMX and skateboard displays, a pop-up mall featuring the best of Jamaican food, art, and fashion, the patrons just never showed up in their numbers for this event.
The organisers indicated that Mutabaruka, Oku Onura, Big Youth, and U-Roy were to be honoured on the programme. However, for the two and a half hours that the Observer‘s team was on the ground, nothing happened except the playing of music.
It was believed that there would have been some action when honouree Mutabaruka took to the stage to play his musical set, but the desired excitement failed to materialise.
Before that, the few patrons present were subject to performances of seemingly random length and quality by various artistes. For the hardcore that did remain entertainments pickings remained slim as the options were to listen to the music being played by whoever was on stage at the time.
The only bright spark was the digital art show projected on the wall of the Urban Development Corporation building on Ocean Boulevard. This was admittedly the most impressive element of the night and paid tribute to the late graphic artist Michael “Freestylee” Thompson, and featured entries from this year’s International Reggae Poster Contest.
Efforts to contact Andrea Davis, conceptualiser of International Reggae Day, for comment were unsuccessful. The event, created in 1994, is a 24-hour global media festival hosted annually on July 1 to highlight the best of Jamaica’s creativity and uplift, inspire and unite the reggae community worldwide with a one true love movement. There were several other events worldwide in cities such as Bangkok, Thailand; Sao Paulo, Brazil; London, England; and Soweto in South Africa.
