At least 500 patrons turned out for the Roots and Culture tour which played in the De Oosterpoort club in Groningen in The Netherlands on Monday night.

“The promoter was very impressed by the turnout and the performances. Such a large crowd is unusual for a Monday night in a club show in the middle of winter, but that is a great sign that there is still a vibrant market for reggae music in Europe,” Cabel ‘Jeffrey’ Stephenson, tour organiser and chief executive officer of Free People Entertainment, said.

Groningen is the sixth largest city in The Netherlands with a population of 230,000 and is located in the northern part of the country.

The show kicked off with emerging reggae singer Zhayna using her big vocals to wow the audience with rock-tinged songs like Runaway. The crowd loved her playful banter with a patron, Melvin, who she declared her emcee for the night and handed him the microphone and he said, “Groningen, how yu feeling?” approximating his best Jamaican accent.

Zhayna then introduced her latest single, opting not to tell the audience the name of the song.

“This song is about one thing that everyone wants from at least one person. Can anyone guess what that one thing is?” Zhayna asked.

Someone, a female, shouted: ‘sex’.

“Sex? Wrong show. Wrong show,” Zhayna said to bouts of laughter from the audience. “I am going to tell you what that one thing is in the song.”

She then belted out a spirited ‘Attention’ while members of the audience rocked and clutched each other. Melville, her ‘designated emcee’, then chimed in: “let us have a round of applause of Zhayna”, and the audience screamed their approval.

Zhayna performs at the De Ooseterport club in Groningen in The Netherlands on Monday night during the Roots and Culture tour.

Zhayna’s interpolation of the Barrington Levy-Bounty Killer hit, Living Dangerously, also went over well with the audience. The audience also seemed to be impressed by her energetic moves and tireless dancing throughout her set.

She kept the momentum going with Outside and elicited great audience participation as she got the 500 strong audience to sing ‘we outside’ and ‘we alright’.

Reggae artiste Jah Mason is one of those rare artistes who is able to express his most authentic self into his music. He is real, meaning real. Authentic. Not fake. He lives what he sings about, especially as he expressed his personal beliefs as a cash crop farmer who farms with his own hands in his native St Elizabeth and that authenticity resonated with the audience as he did Farmer Man to huge cheers.

Groningen is very much an agricultural province. Farms have been here for centuries and it has an extensive agricultural infrastructure with a network of successful farmers. So the cheers reverberated throughout the club as he bigged up those who tilled the soil.

“Where I am from, it’s all about original farmer man food, medicinal herbs, etcetera, and I am proud. And in Holland, there are opportunities to blaze if you know what I mean,” he said to wild cheers. He then did another pro-farmer song, From Wah Day Ya.

Dressed in a dapper full black suit with black shoes, Jah Mason came prepared to deliver an awesome set, but he had one complaint, as he had not been allowed to light up a spliff in the club before his performance and he had adhered to the club’s rules.

Concerned, a female member of the audience ran up to the stage and handed him a small plastic container, and then he took his performance to another level. He did Mi Chalwa and the fans almost lost their collective minds, and not long afterwards, the weed smoke seemed to rise up to the club’s rafters like ancient spirits.

Jah Mason performs at the De Ooseterport club in Groningen in The Netherlands on Monday night during the Roots and Culture tour.

“The weed is the king of the forest, the healing of the nation,” he said, and he looked at the weed and appeared to serenade the green substance with High Grade.

He invoked a bit of emotion at the current political turmoil and wars in the east European region.

“When I look around the world today, and I see innocent people being killed for what they don’t know about, everywhere mi turn, mi see dem ting a gwaan,” he said, before doing Only Love.

He turned down the temperature with Run Come Love Me Tonight and then picked up the pace with his hit, My Princess Gone, and the audience sang the chorus ‘my princess gone’ in one clear voice like a bell and excitement surged through the crowd like an electric current. He exited the stage singing Hill Vibes.

Lutan Fyah was at his awesome best with a masterful performance that showed the full range of his voice and his ability to connect with an audience. He rocked the crowd into a swaying trance-like state with songs like the uptempo Lead the Way, Africa, and Beat Dem.

The crowd cheered when he hit out against ‘cultural imperialism’ as he chanted ‘Selassie I ah beat dem, black Marcus ah beat dem, dem come a Bobo Hill and we go beat dem’. The audience loved the militancy and cheered him on.

Lutan Fyah followed up with the excellent Rasta Reggae Music and he struck a great wellspring of emotion with the plaintive My Heart Cries. He plugged his latest album, Strength and Resilience, before doing the title single in a powerful inspirational tone to great applause from the audience.

Other standout songs in his set included Bossman, Fake Friends and Touch the Road. At the end of his set, the crowd bawled out ‘meer, meer’ (more) but Lutan Fyah had already exited the backstage area.

A few members of the audience leaped onstage and began to dance with the Free People band guitarist Jim High and Zhayna, who was doing backup vocals for Lutan Fyah at the time. They took videos and photos and had a whale of a time.

The show ended on a high note with the audience members jumping onstage to skank up a storm to the sweet reggae rhythms until the final note.

The Roots and Culture tour moves to the Tivolivredenburg club in the city of Utrecht, the fourth largest city in The Netherlands, on March 4, before doing a show in the Melkweg club in Amsterdam, the country’s cultural centre and its most populous city, on March 6.

The 25-gig Roots and Culture tour will crisscross the continent with shows in Spain, France, Switzerland and England in coming weeks.