Ragga Muffins Festival: A Return to the Ordinary

Junior Reid at Reggae on the River

The 26th annual Ragga Muffins Festival in Long Beach marked a much needed return to the festival's roots, both musically and culturally - homogeneous merchandise not withstanding. The show lost a sizable portion of last year's KROQ pseudo-rocker crowd, leaving only true fans of the fest's unique experience.

"I know why we actually started," said event co-founder Barbara Barabino. "And it was to bring [to the forefront] and honor the roots and culture of the music."

Sometime between 1996 – when Rasta hippy flower children with hairy arm pits and natty dreads filled the Long Beach Arena with love and blessings – to the present, less earthy crowd where the women wear 4 inch stilettos, forgetting the tremendous amount standing and walking required - there was a demographic shift. Local artists and artisans' hand-crafted works were replaced with mass produced screened tees, plastic hemp leaf leis, and swap-meet jewelry. Gone is real social consciousness, replaced with weekend revolutionaries clad in Che Guevara t-shirts, ignorant of little more than his name.

"A lot of the vendors do not have anything the people want to buy," Barabino said when asked why there were fewer vendors this year. "This is a cultural show and over the years I have seen the vendors bring less cultural art."

Co-headliners Junior Reid and Bunny Wailer played to a relatively packed house at 8:30 p.m., not being subject to the same unfortunate fate of Anthony B., whose performance last year seemed intimate after two-thirds of the audience left following Matisyahu's set. As longtime fans and attendees of the show and exhibition - formerly known as the Bob Marley Festival – your authors were pleased to see a more traditional fan-base.

Not that the audience heard much of Wailer's performance. His mic was so low that beneath the weight of the drummer, two keyboardists, the trombone, trumpet, and sax, his trio of male backup singers – clad in matching mustard yellow outfits – the bassist, AND the guitarist (give us a second to breath), his typically rich voice became nothing more than a barely audible mumble punctuated by the occasional 'Yeah,' and 'Jah.'

All respect to Wailer's pedigree but it was Junior Reid and sons who stole the show. If the auditorium was not crowed before his set began, it certainly filled quickly as Andrew and Wada Blood showed that the apple doesn't, perfectly prepping the audience for Reid's kinetic display of youthful energy.

Canadian R&B Reggae fusion artist Syren stresses the importance of staying positive, being self-reliant and having a sense of self worth in her music and song writing. "To me life is about staying true to yourself [and] what you do," she said. "You know in your heart what's best for you."

With the goal in mind to be someone for intelligent young girls to look up to, Syren struggles to attain commercial appeal without falling back on the negative female sex-object stereotype, so prevalent in pop culture today.

Image aside, Syren may struggle to break into the more developed U.S. music market for other reasons. Neither an entertainer nor a musician her lackluster performances as festival opener both Saturday and Sunday (too early if you ask us) could have benefited from a live band and back-up singers or a more polished routine. Unfortunately her crystal clear voice over a musical track was not sufficient to hold the interest of on-lookers and she performed to a mostly empty hall. It would also behoove the young artist to create a website independent of her MySpace Profile.

Saturday's late sets notwithstanding this year's events ran smoothly and almost as scheduled. We hope that vendors will head the call for more culturally relevant wares and look forward to another physically exhausting weekend covering the Ragga Muffins Festival in 2008.

Here's to a new pair of walking shoes...

*Cross-posted on BizofShowBiz and on Kymlee's column.

Back To Top