An earlier article on this platform reference Reggae on the River – schedule for the end July in beautiful Humboldt County, California. This festival is celebrating its 31st staging this summer. Another reggae festival that is truly worth noting this year is SummerJam: The Everlasting Festival – scheduled for July 3 thru 5 in Cologne, Germany. Like Reggae on the River, SummerJam is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
Those of us who are close to both the festival and reggae music industries cannot begin to describe the challenges and “tribulations” that is involve with planning and keeping a reggae music festival going for ten years. Therefore, we hope that readers of this article will agree that the organizers of these two events truly deservers our “Standing Ovation”.
This year SummerJam organizer, Klaus Maack gave it the deserving sub-title – The Everlasting Festival – a name truly earned. Known to his friends and colleagues in the festival industry ‘Daddy Maack’, Klaus is head of Contour Music – a company that seeks to introduce his fellow Germans to a multiple faceted music industry via live performances. In an interview with the e-magazine Reggaeville, Klaus noted that a big part of his inspiration to plan the first festival was Reggae Sunsplash.

Beres Hammond
Beres Hammond

His very first festival included artists like Black Uhuru, The Wailers Band, Manu Dibango, the late Dennis Brown and Gill Scott-Heron.
When the stage is lit this year Cologne will welcome a wide spectrum of artists ranging from Damian Marley, Steel Pulse, Soja, Chris Martin and Jessie Royal to super stars like Beres Hammond and Wyclef Jean.
 
Details on this year’s festival are posted at www.summerjam.de
Contact info at:
Contour Festival Organization GmbH
Alexanderstr. 78
D-70182 Stuttgart
Tel: +49711238 50 0

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