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I truly enjoyed this year’s Montreal Reggae Festival, and I must big up all of the organizers, artists & performers, dj’s, vendors, and fans who attended.  MRF 2016 (Edition 13) took place Friday August 26th, Saturday August 27th, and Sunday August 28th outdoors at Montreal’s Old Port.  The complete list of performers may be too much to mention, but some stars of this year’s festival included artists the likes of Cocoa Tea, Sanchez, Barrington Levy, Mavado, Spragga Benz, Vershon, Romain Virgo, Elephant Man, Josey Wales, Brigadier Jerry, Charlie Chaplin, Olatunji, Ce’Cile, Jahmiel, Ghost, Eyesus, Chelsea Stewart, and Ammoye.

I must admit that I was very enticed by the show’s line up, so much so that despite a late Friday night in Toronto after a Shabbao-Mavado Sound Academy show, both myself and Lisa West with very little rest still mustered up the energy to leave early Saturday morning and take a relatively quick five hour drive to Montreal.  In the end, it was all worth it for the ReggaeMania.com crew, as we worked tirelessly to photograph and video this show.  The entire event was well executed, and what was promised was delivered.

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I must big up Sanchez, who worked very hard to please the Montreal crowd.  I was waiting to see if it would be the same Sanchez show we saw in Toronto recently, but it wasn’t.

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Big up Barrington Levy as well, although many would agree (with no disrespect) that the MRF show closer should have been
Sanchez, not Barrington himself. It was nice when Barriington, late in his show, also brought back Spragga Benz for a short cameo stage appearance (I had missed his show earlier).

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Big up Romain Virgo, who after a nicely paced performance, was forced to premature exit the stage apparently due to time constraints.

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And lastly, big up Mavado, who was the Saturday Night show closer.  I must say that the Montreal audience was not feeling  Mavado’s performance.  Mavado sensed this, and did what veteran artists do, work even harder to win the support of almost 4,000 skeptics.  In the end, not a bad Mavado show, but I prefer Mavado as a studio artist, his one-man show still has a lot to be desired.

Well, I promised myself I would keep this review short, so there it is, please pree our PICS and VIDEOS, taken by Lisa West and myself (yeah we worked it!!).

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