Junior Reid, Razhel and Chronixx and the Zincfence Redemption at Summerstage, Central Park 7/27/14

Junior Reid, Razhel and Chronixx

Summerstage, Central Park

July 27, 2014

As I’ve mentioned a number of times on this site, The Joy of Violent Movement has been a mostly one-man operation run out of my apartment, while maintaining a full-time job in Midtown Manhattan, and as you can imagine there are competing demands for my attention and time, and naturally it creates a rather weird scenario in which I find myself much like Clark Kent turning into Superman. But every moment of this crazy labor of love has been worth it; however, it does mean that some of the nitty gritty aspects of this site take longer such as editing photos. (I’ll take several hundred shots at a show and I’m often relegated to editing photos on commutes back and forth from my day job or from a show, during lunch breaks if I’m not writing a post and at home, while writing a post. What can you do, right?)

In any case, with last night being the official start of fall here in the Northern Hemisphere, I can still look a bit backwards to this past summer. So at the end of July, the folks of Summerstage along with the folks at OkayPlayer hosted an afternoon of irie vibes featuring reggae and dancehall legend Junior Reid and soon-to-be reggae superstar Chronixx, who has been touring in support of his impressive and conscious EP, Dread and Terrible. I should also note that Chronixx was also in town for an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, adding to the sense that the young reggae artist was blowing up – and big time.

Check out photos from an rather amazing afternoon – in gorgeous Central Park, no less, below:

The Summerstage crowd waiting with equal parts anticipation and boredom on a warm afternoon. Granted, I have been out at Summerstage shows when it’s been much hotter but it seemed to take some energy out of the crowd early on.

The Rice and Peas Crew – The Rice and Peas Crew Party Crew warmed the crowd up with a bunch of reggae classics, dubstep and other sounds from the Caribbean Islands. In fact, it seemed that every nation and commonwealth in the Caribbean had a contingency there, and when each respective nation was shouted out, the folks in that particular contingency lost their minds. And I have to admit that was a fun sight.

Jamaica! I didn’t post it but there were a few folks who were flying a Jamaican flag that had a rather iconic image of Bob Marley’s face on the other side.

Junior Reid

This man for obvious reasons caught my attention.

After Junior Reid’s set, two incredible dance troupes came out and did their thing – you can see one of the troupes doing the “row di boat” with actual rowing motion. And of course, the “‘pon the river” and others.

Razhel – Interestingly, on that particular weekend, i saw Rahzel twice in 24 hours. Strange how that works, huh? In any case, this particular appearance was a bit different than his Rocksteady Crew Anniversary show appearance.

Chronixx and the Zincfence Redemption – Chronixx and his backing band played material form his latest album and it managed to be profoundly powerful stuff.