Raggamuffin Review: Second show a hit

The crowd lap up the sounds on the second day of Raggamuffin PHOTO: BEN FRASER

What: Raggamuffin 2014
When: Saturday
Where: Rotorua International Stadium
Reviewed by: Adriana Weber

The final day of Rotorua's Raggamuffin Festival went out with a bang.

Thousands crowded the Rotorua International Stadium for the second and final day of the reggae festival.

The show kicked off at midday with local band Strangely Arousing playing the first set. The five piece ska reggae band gave a lively and entertaining performance, which showed exactly why this talented young group won last year's Pacifica Beats competition.

Sons of Zion were up next and gave a fantastic performance, a mash up off all things reggae, rock, dub and funk.

Three Houses Down we well-received as people eased into the festival.

The crowd almost tripled in the lead up to the performance of Common Kings. The group gave an energetic, fantastic performance, which got the crowd pumped. Their audience interaction was spot on and they got the crowd singing with their hands in the air.

To my surprise, the crowd thinned for New Zealand band House of Shem, who I thought gave a pretty noteworthy performance.

One of the highlights of the day was Aotearoa Reggae All Stars. It was quite a spectacle seeing so many performers on stage and their performance was equally spectacular. They sang easy to listen to, entertaining, genuinely good music that oozed Kiwiana.

Their cover of Bob Marley's hit Three Little Birds was a knock-out.

Groundation followed, though the music was a little slow-paced after the energetic high that was the All Stars.

Morgan Heritage drew a pretty big crowd, but the biggest crowd of the night formed for the grand-finale, Damian Marley.

Out came the glow sticks as the night grew dark and the audience prepared for Marley to take the stage. But they were left waiting a while. There seemed to be a bit of a delay before his performance could kick off, but when it did, the crowd went wild. Marley gave a performance like no other, a performance that I think would have had every foot in that stadium tapping and had everyone's hands swaying in the air.

A perfect end it to a long, but fantastic festival.