By. Thomas Bray
Last weekend, over 20,000 dancing bodies swamped Squamish B.C for the annual Squamish Music Valley Festival. As The Chief towered over skinny jean hipsters, shirtless bros and sun kissed babes, we soaked up the scotching summer vibes and bounced to lively sounds ranging from indie rock, hip hop to electronica.
HHV’s highlights had to be Friday’s gap bridging performances between old school Cali hip hop kingpins Jurassic 5 and Seattle’s current Billboard chart topper Macklemore. Having recently reunited via the release of Coachella’s 2013 line up, Jurassic 5 stormed the Garibaldi Stage with a set of party rap poetics like ‘Quality Control’ and ‘Somebody in Da House’ while the sea of snapbacks took in every rhyme with a grin that reminisced to a golden era in hip hop. The group also performed with with oversized turntable props and managed to squeeze in a scratch battle between the legendary DJ Numark and Cut Chemist amongst their lyrical rampage.
However, due to a clash in performance times, it didn’t matter how big those turntables were as word spread fast that a red headed Seattleite in a Mexican poncho has arrived from the Thrift Shop. As crowds swiftly moved towards the Stawamus Stage to catch Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, the sun settled across the valley to the sounds the MC opening with ‘Ten Thousand Hours’ and backed melodically by Owuor Arunga. Differing himself from many of the artists that day, Macklemore’s performance was both captivating and involving the majority Canadian audience as the rapper dialogued in between tracks on his proposal to his Canadian girlfriend, thoughts on Canada’s progressive attitudes to health care, pot and especially same-sex marriage which followed his track ‘Same Love’ with parallel lyrical content. The climax of the show was definitely when he dropped the U.S. Platinum single ‘Thrift Shop’ where the crowd went bonkers and young girls danced in ways their mothers would question.
As they say, pictures speak a thousand words, so we’ll leave you with some snaps from the shows below. Enjoy!
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