Jah Mason poses with Sharaily (right) and her sister Shanaya at the end of the Roots and Culture show in Utrecht in The Netherlands last week.
Two teenage girls took over Jah Mason’s set during his performance at the TivoliVredenburg club in Utrecht in The Netherlands last week.
The warning signs were clear as in only Jah Mason’s second song, a section of the audience immediately cried out for him to sing My Princess Gone.
“Soon,” he reassured them.
So when he got to the song in the penultimate item in his set, 17-year-old Sharaily was already charged up and ready to go. She took the mile and belted out the first few bars confidently: “My Princess gone far far away…” and a wild burst of energy ran through the crowd like an electric current and the whole crowd began to sing before Jah Mason took back the microphone and joined in.
Only 17, Sharaily and her mother, Miriam, aunt Brenda and cousins ShanAya and Jahfaya had made the one hour drive from Nijmegen to see the Roots and Culture show in Utrecht in The Netherlands.
The family hails from Curaçao and are big reggae music lovers.
“We love reggae music. We drove one hour to this show. We have attended the big festivals like Reggae Geel, Reggae Sundance and Reggae Sunsplash. We love everything about reggae music and Jamaica,” she said.
The following night, Jah Mason aka Farmerman performed in the packed Melkweg club in Amsterdam, wowing fans with his unique edutainment brand of music.
He extolled the virtues of farming and organic foods with his Farmer Man trilogy of songs: Farmer Man, From Wah Day Ya and Farmer Man Double Up.
“When I am not performing, I am farming,” he said.
He sang an ode to ganja with Mi Chalwa and closed strongly with his seminal hit, My Princess Gone, which had the 300 plus strong crowd singing along line by line in one clear voice that reverberated to the rafters of the club.
The Roots and Culture tour also features Lutan Fyah and emerging singer Zhayna.
The 25-city tour pulled into cities like Deventer in The Netherlands, and the college town Leuven in Belgium earlier this week.
“The shows are fantastic so far. We pulled out almost 500 patrons at the Black Lab on a Tuesday night and in Brest, there was a great crowd mix of at least 350 French, Guadeloupean and Surinamese people on a Thursday. These are great numbers for during the week shows,” tour organiser Cabel Stephenson of Free People Entertainment said.
The tour pulls into the city of Nantes tonight, March 14 for a show at the Warehouse club.