MICHAEL Kerwin of Xtreme Fest Ja, along with his partners Sameer Channan and Junior Greaves, have hailed the first staging of Xtreme Fest a success.

Featuring nine events, Xtreme Fest took place over four days from October 5-8, at venues including Exit 21 in New Kingston, Star Fusion, Sabina Park, and Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre.

“Our idea was to bring a festival to Kingston. We have experience working and organising multiple festivals in Canada and Jamaica and one thing we realised is that none of these events take place in the city, so that’s how we decided to create a festival to be held in Kingston,” Kerwin disclosed.

Said Channan, “Most of the biggest festivals take place in Ocho Rios, Montego Bay and Negril, and now we have one in Kingston. For our first year we are simply amazed — the energy and the vibe the whole week was great — and we can’t wait for 2024 to make this bigger and better than ever.”

The events that Xtreme Fest hosted included City Nights, Dancehall Invasion, Xtreme Wet and Wild Pool Party, De Big Wine Down, and the official after party at Bounty Sundays.

The event, according to Greaves, took six months of planning and marketing before it was executed.

“It was easy to get the artist line-up confirmed, and every artiste that we interacted with was professional. Our line-up consisted of the likes of Bounty Killer, Tommy Lee Sparta, Kraff, RajahWild, 10Tik, Renee 630, Eyesus, M Dot R, Stock Boss, Supa Hype, Big Zeekz, D Chase, Burgz and others. Skeng was our special guest performer,” said Greaves.

Asked what type of investment went into the event, Kerwin said, “The investment was endless — a lot of time, sweat and tears. Everyone on our team did an amazing job and we can’t thank them enough.”

Kerwin shared some highlights from the multi-day event.

“We can’t even say one moment that was the highlight [as] the week on a whole was just a great feeling. One moment that was very special for us was when Bounty Killer endorsed Xtreme Fest during his performance on Friday night. That gave us a heart-warming feeling and a great welcome to the Kingston entertainment scene. It was also an honour to have Skeng come out and perform with Kraff as a special guest,” he added.

Twisted Entertainment and Hilltop Records were co-promoters of Xtreme Fest.