WE’VE been waiting on it all month long, and now it’s finally here! Well, almost.

This month has two extra-special dates that have been marked down on calendars all across Guyana ever since they were announced: They’re August 23 and August 27, the dates when the Jamzone Summer festivities all go down.
And it all starts off with the Stag Beer/GTT Bacchanal Wednesday next week.
As has happened in the last few years, this year’s Jamzone celebrations have been scaled back to just a skeleton of what they used to be in the event’s 17 years in existence, reportedly due the perceived downturn in the economy among other factors.
Nonetheless, the organisers have still managed to keep Jamzone as Guyana’s hottest August event, always having that shock factor. And this year is looking to be no different.
Despite having only one soca show and the beach jam this year, HJ has definitely shocked quite a few when this year’s happenings were revealed.
This year, the Hits and Jams crew is pushing the envelope with an all-out, full-energy, action-packed soca show, and of course there’s nothing unusual about that!
But they definitely got the buzz started in a big way when persons found out that the concert’s on a Wednesday that isn’t a holiday, and that the day after isn’t a holiday either!
What’s more, there will be over 20 of the most trending soca stars on stage in Guyana on one night and well into the morning! And when the party’s over, you can go home, catch a few hours of sleep, and then get up and get to work, if you have any energy left. Bosses, be prepared for the inordinate amount of sick employees that will not be turning up for work come next Thursday!

A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE
“We really want to bring a different experience to this year; we want it to be something that persons will remember for a long time, you know,” explained HJ Co-founder, Kerwin Bollers.

“You’re accustomed to going to shows on a weekend, but we want you to actually go to the show on a Wednesday night then go to work on the Thursday. We want you to be in the workplace talking about your experience and stuff like that,” he added.
When Bollers and team sat down to sort out just what Jamzone would be like this year, they just knew one thing: That they wanted it to be different.
And with almost everything under the sun being done already, they had to look hard! But they didn’t have to look that far; only as far as our closest Caribbean neighbour, Trinidad.
“The Soca show basically is a concept that we’re collaborating on with Destra; it’s something that’s done in Trinidad; it’s called Bacchanal Wednesday Festival of Bands,” Kerwin said, adding:
“If you look at the shows that happened around Carnival time, it happens at around midweek; and we want to give that experience.
“As far as my knowledge goes, I don’t think that we’ve ever had a big show like that in Guyana. Most of the artistes on the show would have visited Guyana before, maybe once or twice, maybe even more, but we’ve never had all of them at one time at one show.”

But it won’t be just about the artistes, as a lot is going into making this show as special as possible.
“What we’re doing with this particular concert is that we want to focus a lot on décor; we really want to transform the location,” Kerwin said.
They’re also considering the time factor, given Guyana’s “2AM” curfew, and organisers currently lobbying to see if they could get an extension to “3AM” in the hope of having the concert commence at around 21:00hrs.
So, with just seven hours, give or take, and over 20 international artistes, not to mention an extensive line-up of local singers, it makes one wonder about the possibility of overkill, but the organizer is promising that that will not be the case.
“No, I don’t see that,” Kerwin said, adding: “There are a lot of people who would have experienced similar concerts in Trinidad and Barbados, Miami and so on.
“You have a lot of concerts, like Carnival, where you have all these artistes, so it’s just that it’s never been done in Guyana.
“We want to be the first to bring so much artistes on one show.”
Aside from Destra, the night’s schedule reads like a “Who’s who of Soca”. And it’s not just soca; there’s a little chutney in there too, with reigning Chutney Monarch, Ravi B, as well as former International Chutney Monarch, KI, also in the mix.
There’s also Allison Hinds; Denise Belfon; Freezie; Falty; Swappy, and Orlando Octane.
“We’ve never had it with a cast like this,” Kerwin said. “And you would notice that it’s a very balanced cast. We have some Chutney…
“There are some of the stars from the past, and then there’s a lot of present-day artistes; and then we have future, still up-and-coming artistes like Orlando Octave and persons like that, so it’s a very balanced show that spans over a number of generations.”
The overseas artistes are scheduled to begin arriving from Tuesday.