Roots Day - overview

Essential Festival 2000

Saturday 15th to Sunday 16th July 2000
Stanmer Park , Brighton, England

The Roots Day: More chilled, more sunshine and more people than the previous day. A lot of people seemed to spend their time sat just outside the tents enjoying the weather with the music flowing in the background - but there was plenty of good music too…

Started off with Zion Train, who I've always thought of as being a bit hippy-techno-dub. Instead they really went at it, playing out loads of rocking, skanking dub. Their vocalsit and MC got the crowd really going for it (for 4 o'clock in the afternoon) with calls for "vibrations".

The Hip Hop tent was, like most of the tents, loads more crowded than the day before. The Rascals (whom I've don't know much about) were on when I first stuck my head in, laying down lyrics over other peoples instrumentals, including the ubiquitous "Simon Says" - check Will's review for some more details on this…

Rascalz

I spent the next hour or so wandering and sitting outside - the vibe was great, and the rolling bass from every direction, especially the Jah Shaka sound system was fairly coma inducing, in the best possible way. I tried to catch Fila Brazillia in the Eclectic tent (one of my favourites), hoping that they were playing live - but they were just Djing. They played some decent breaks, but it wasn't really in line with the vibe of the rest of the festival - and there's only so many times that you can hear "Dooms Night" over a weekend.

Back to the hip hop, to see Rahzel, Godfather of Noise and human beatbox extraordinaire put on an amazing show. I've seen some good beat boxing recently (Killa Kela for one) but this was just incredible. It was like he had a drum machine, DJ and MC stuck down his throat, knocking out tracks that would easily measure up to studio productions. He jumped around in style, doing double speed drum n' bass type beats and slow head nodders. Any MC following this would have looked tame, so we headed over to see Rae and Christian, the Manc hip hop wonders do their thang.

Rae & Christian They put on the best live show I saw all weekend, with a full band featuring guitar (Steve Christian), drums, percussion, bass and flute/saxophone plus Mark Rae and Peter Parker on the turntables. They played a wide selection of tracks, some instrumentals and some with their soulful resident vocalist, Veba. The highlights were Roots Manuva making a guest appearance on the mic - as Mark Rae introduced him - the best MC in Britain today and Fingerthing. Fingerthing are a stand alone duo of Peter Parker, scratch DJ and double bass player, erm, I didn't catch his name (something like Stig - sorry if you ever read this!). They performed two jam sessions together, showing off incredible dexterity on the decks and fret(less) board, laying down some fat, funky basslines and chopped up beats. The whole band was really tight together, with some wicked solos be each member, and we got the added comedy bonus of Mark Rae picking up the mic himself towards the end of the set (no disrespect!). They encored with a wicked live version of "Spellbound". We (and the crowd) lapped it up - real live British hip hop.

After they'd finished, I stayed to watch a bit of DJ Krush, who started with "Kemuri" and launched off into atmospheric soundscapes a la "Code 4109" his new mix album- impressive as always. I tried to take in a bit of three of the headliners - Kid Koala, Lee Scratch Perry and of course James Brown. Unfortunately, the Godfather of Soul and been switched with Angie Stone, so I only caught the end of his set. "It's a man's world" was good, and it's amazing to see him still able to screech out those "oww!"s - but the tent was far too crowded to get in very far. Scratch Perry, another legend, wasn't really doing it for me - but I probably didn't give him enough time. Kid Koala was also a bit hit and miss, and also a bit mad. His jabbering on about robots and shit between tunes began to drag - he was obviously over excited about his performance. The best tracks were those heavy on the scratching - I don't think his band, Bullfrog really added much colour to the sound. Back at James Brown the crowd had dissapated, - 'cause James had finished and Angie was on. Dissapointed, I went back to Kid Koala to see him finish up.

outside

Overall the vibe was excellent all day, much friendlier and less corporatised than some of the big festivals I've been to this year. Rae and Christian were awesome, but I was less impressed with the final headliners - Lee Scratch Perry would have been the one for the real dub and reggae headz. The only other problem was the size of the tents - on Saturday they were the right size to accommodate enough people, but at several points on Sunday some of them were too full to get in. Apart from that it was cool - nice to have the Essential Festival back.

review by: Luke Williams

photos by: Luke Williams