Review - Steel Pulse and the 5th Montreal Reggae Festival

So, as promised, Elran (my partner in life and Indyish) and I will now attempt to review the Steel Pulse show we attended together out on the glowy little Bonsecour quay at the edge of the Old Port here in Montreal. Elran and I talked about the show all the way home, and this is my summary of all that.

Bonsecours View

We arrived at about 8 and after a few happy moments walking around and checking out the rasta vendours, over priced beer, and good cheap foods, we clumped ourselves up near the stage in the empty wet spot where one might expect the crowd to be. Then we sat nearby and watched the sound technicians under the stage trying to put different cables together to get light and sound back despite the drenching they’d got all afternoon. A host took the stage eventually and before turning on some recorded reggae she big up’ed about 20 local businesses and vendors and fest supporters, thanked us for our patience and asked who in the audience had been at all 5 Montreal Reggae Festivals. As the music mounted and people around us started to grind with youthful exuberance I made a beeline for 2 of those reggae regulars to get some dish.

These guys were not happy, but were trying to be respectful about it. This festival, according to them had been overall disapointing. Shows had started over an hour late due to technical issues and today with the heavy afternoon rain they were running 4 hours behind. There were no headliners, except for Steel Pulse who they’d seen a dozen times before. I asked who they’d liked to have seen and though a few names came half heartedly up what’s really at the heart of the problem, they told me sadly, is that a generation of original roots reggae musicians is dying out and there doesn’t seem yet to be a real music scene to replace them. One of the gents I spoke with spends half his year in Jamaica and when I asked how the reggae scene was there he said, bad, frankly, it’s all dancehall and what we miss is Roots.

I asked if any of the local musicians who had played had shown an inspiring spark for something good coming from the next generation of reggae and they nodded and with increasing enthusiasm told me the highlight of the weekend was Inword on the Friday night. Which is great - this incredible soulful group, collaging messages from the spiritual texts of many religions to make a fusion call for peace, love, and justice is not just a local Montreal diamond in the rough. These guys fuel their roots at the weekly improvised mind blowing jam that is the Kalmunity Vibe Collective. Inword doesn’t exist in a vacuum but are part of a vibrant, nurturing community and that should give roots reggae and music/people lovers in general some hope.

Anyway, the show on Sunday ended up getting quashed but not quite conquered. Poor Jah Cutta got the rawest end of the deal with a set that could not have lasted more then 5 minutes, but he did it wholeheartedly and didn’t kvetch a word, and I thought that was classy. Though his one song (grinding dancehall) didn’t quite move me, his dignity and friendliness backstage did.

Junior Kelly managed to electrify our soggy mass in the crowd - and actually the sky was beautiful, streaked with light, and glowing thickly purple by then. His voice and eloquent moving politics brought down the day’s first wave of true reggae joy. He was tormented by microphone problems, sat down with head in hands at one point during a song, clearly heartbroken to be suffering sound problems in what was already going to be a cropped set. The tension reached a climax when the organizers, under intense pressure from the city to finish on time dispite the rain delay, tried to cut him before he could play the new song he had been looking forward to sharing here for the first time. He flat refused, said the youth needed to hear the words, told the band not to play he’d do it quickly and quietly on his own, and with righteous, undeniable fury he got his way, spun out a glorious tirade that put many flowless rappers to shame, and stirred our hearts with its message of resisting war and violence and holding on to eachother to find peace. The crowd raised their hands quietly to testify to his words then build up a beat for him with their hands and we floated with thanks (and with tears in my never-dry eyes) that he had insisted on giving us this moment.
Then Grammy Award-Winning Steel Pulse took the stage and cracked their incomparable voices and harmonies over our tired shoulders and we became young and beautiful and dancing. We happen to have listened to the album True Democracy on the way over and they happened to play a whole lot from it, including opening with Worth His Weight in Gold ie; Rally Round the Flag. (Elran: “called it.”) I dragged him into the press pen for some of the show and watched with glee as he enjoyed from this spit-on-me distance with the now-packed happy crowd at our backs. He was especially pleased by the bassists groovy little hip moves. After a while, we slipped back into messy muddy heart of it all, moving in slow motion through air three parts cloud, one part moonshine, and everyone was swaying. El saw Steel Pulse before but in small bar venues. He said the best thing about this outdoor Montreal Reggae Festival show was the bigger feeling of shared energy and appreciation. Plus it was cool but not cold, and oddfog beautiful - a perfect night for a show. The city extended their contract with the organizers by a half an hour so the band could stay on until midnight, and maybe that wasn’t enough, but it was something.

I shot some videos with my point and shoot, so the audio quality is middling but in both of these you see little kids at the show, and in the second one towards the end there a very dear thumbs up from security to the boy he’d leet sneak in to take some pictures that kind of made my night. Reggae may be in a time of transition, and the Montreal Festival may need to sort out a better venue for late night, and possibly a better tech team, but the spirit is kind and healthy and the youngsters are right up front and loving it, so I suspect, somehow, that all will be well…