The Return Of Sierra Nevada World Music Festival
BY MICHAEL TURNER ON JULY 2, 2023
“All kinda people come a dance” – Sugar Minott
It was the return of the 26th version of the Sierra Nevada World Music Fest, the crown jewel of the many festivals devoted to niche musics in Northern California. SNWMF has been a summertime fixture here since 2008. It’s the brainchild of the late Warren Smith who, from the 1970s, had made it his mission to bring remarkable, authentic Jamaican music to the U.S.A. Jamaica’s homegrown music had been ignored in the British colonial era, oppressed to the degree that recording technology didn’t even arrive on the island until the late 1950s. This was coincident with Jamaica’s emergence as an independent country in 1963, and music very quickly became the entire expression of the nation’s new identity.
Click here to read more:
