Jazz Jamaica

Glastonbury Festival 2000 reviews

Jazz Jamaica
Pyramid Stage
17:30 Satuday 24th June 2000

There was a Sunday afternoon feeling around the JazzWorld field which was rather appropriate as it was indeed Sunday afternoon. The place was full of people chilling out in the rather pleasant sunshine. This field is on the main route to the Green Fields and is surrounded by some very good food stalls, and so we found ourselves there at around 3pm for something to eat and a good place to eat it and this seemed just right. What we now needed was some music - cue Jazz Jamaica.

Jazz Jamaica turned out to be a very pleasant way to spend an hour and perfectly suited the prevailing mood. They can be best described as a fusion of ska, jazz and reggae. First of all the MC made sure we got our terminology right, it's not ska pronounced in clipped anglo saxon but an extended 's-key-aaar' and when he asked us if we were having a good time we had to say 'Yeaa maan' (perhaps you had to be there :-).

We were treated to several tracks from their 4th album, including the title track Double Barrell and Marcus Junior, all of which were superb and the band, which was heavy on brass, had a large part of the crowd up and at it. Their music was varied in style and included some spanish influenced Soca tracks with mellow guitar and later some heavy use of synthesised keyboards and covers of soul and reggae standards.

Further into the set many people recognised 'Kantaloon Island' from their 2nd album and then there was more 's-key-aaar' with 'Confucious' which was also thoroughly enjoyed by the crowd. However, the MC was not satisfied with the dancing style and insisted we needed a lesson in 's-key-aaar' dancing which was a nice piece of audience participation and got a few laughs.

All in all, a fun-packed, foot-tappin' journey through Jamaican music and we were glad we had dropped by.