THE first instalment of the 2015 biannual staging of Color Festival at Hope Gardens in St Andrew on Sunday was a blitz of lights, fun, and of course, colour.

“We want to thank the fans of the festival who came out and made it a success again with their energy,” Safia Cooper, event organiser and Pulse’s director of sales and marketing, told the Jamaica Observer.

The international event, which was first brought to Jamaican shores this time in 2014, showed its maturity and evolution. The massive screens, frenetic lighting blended well with the pumping varying music styles from each of the four DJs. The festival’s overseas Electronic Dance Music beginnings have been officially cast off with only Kyle Desouza sticking with the genre in his set. The remaining DJs, Titan VCD, DJ Sanjay and DJ Kurt Riley played whatever the crowd fancied from the latest Soca, to hip-hop, and dancehall.

Their music was punctuated by the hourly highlight of the festival, the throwing of the colour powder. Each countdown was greeted with glee from the massive crowd.

“We are already in the planning stages for September,” Cooper explained.

— Rory Daley