Excerpt of article by Brittanie Shey

Houston International Festival: iFest

One act we were most eager to see was Taj Weekes, who played two sets Saturday afternoon, first with his band, Adowa, and then a solo acoustic set on the minuscule HEB Cultural Stage. We caught the second set, where he was accompanied by bandmates Adoni Xavier on guitar and Radss Desiree on bass.

Weekes was suffering from a bout of laryngitis, but if anything that gave his voice an even more delicate edge on songs like “Kink and Crinkle,” about the persecution of Rastas in his hometown. It was a rare treat to hear his reggae music stripped down to its barest essentials. It’s nice to hear acoustic guitar in reggae and not a Casio. The people crowded onto the grass seemed to agree. When Weekes said he’d have to cut his set short because he felt his voice sounded so bad, members of the audience begged him to play a few more songs.

As Weekes was finishing his set we noticed a guy in the crowd dressed like Hollywood Montrose attempting to hoist a HUGE drum onto his shoulders. He stumbled around a bit before heading away from the stage area. As we meandered through the Caribbean Zone (Aftermath’s favorite section of iFest this year, BTW) towards the Bud Light World Music Stage to see George Clinton we found out where the guy was headed.

Read the rest of the article here.