Rise Festival
This weekend was the annual Rise Festival in London. This festival celebrates London’s diversity and opposing racism, it took place at Finsbury Park and it was FREE!!! There were various stages celebrating different cultures in the arts, for example there was the Mela Stage which celebrates traditional and contemproaryAsian culture. The Urban Music stage featured up and coming Urban artist in England. Finally there was the main stage were the better known artist performed such as Bob Marley's old group The Wailers , and get this... hip hop artist COMMON was there. He was looking even hotter in person and to see him perform live just made my day. Here is a very handsome picture of him on stage.
Anyway, Common performed a couple of songs and his DJ, I forget his name, but he did a set that just got the crowd on fire!!! I should also add it was really good to see everyone just appreciating the music and it did not matter what culture it was everyone just enjoyed themselves. The park was just crowded and after awhile it just became a little too much so RC and myself went a little area, kind of like a big hill, that they had fenced off for those who just wanted to sit on the grass and get away from the crowd. We stayed there for awhile and just relaxed. Soon we became ready to go home so we made our way through the crowd and then we decided to just stop at the Mela stage just to see what the next performance would be and they had brought on this dj, his name was Nerm. He spinned some good tunes and the crowd just became hyped!! It felt like we were at a club. Then some other band come on stage and it was not as good so we decided to stay and see if the was going to come back. That took like a good 20-30 mins for their set to end and when that dj came back the crowd came alive again. He was only able to play for about 15mins or so and then the organizers told him he had to pack up. The crowd was rightfully angery chanting "MORE MORE!!" After it looked like he was not going to be playing again we decided to leave and bring to an end of another fablous weekend in London. Plus Big Brother was coming on the tele soon so it was good timing :-)
Anyway, Common performed a couple of songs and his DJ, I forget his name, but he did a set that just got the crowd on fire!!! I should also add it was really good to see everyone just appreciating the music and it did not matter what culture it was everyone just enjoyed themselves. The park was just crowded and after awhile it just became a little too much so RC and myself went a little area, kind of like a big hill, that they had fenced off for those who just wanted to sit on the grass and get away from the crowd. We stayed there for awhile and just relaxed. Soon we became ready to go home so we made our way through the crowd and then we decided to just stop at the Mela stage just to see what the next performance would be and they had brought on this dj, his name was Nerm. He spinned some good tunes and the crowd just became hyped!! It felt like we were at a club. Then some other band come on stage and it was not as good so we decided to stay and see if the was going to come back. That took like a good 20-30 mins for their set to end and when that dj came back the crowd came alive again. He was only able to play for about 15mins or so and then the organizers told him he had to pack up. The crowd was rightfully angery chanting "MORE MORE!!" After it looked like he was not going to be playing again we decided to leave and bring to an end of another fablous weekend in London. Plus Big Brother was coming on the tele soon so it was good timing :-)
