
This past week saw the second annual Buma Rotterdam Beats Festival, an event organised to celebrate and emphasise the importance of Hip Hop, R&B, Soul, Reggae & Electronic music. Through various workshops, seminars and live performances, the festival brought together a wealth of international delegates, including top European and American managers, bookers, industry pioneers, bloggers and several widely respected innovators.
PinBoard was invited to take part in one of the panel discussions, alongside respected co-commentators like Okayplayer (U.S), Juice Magazine (DE), Puma (NL) and Splash Magazine (DE). The discussion was about the emergence and subsequent dominance of the blogopshere and dissected what it is, as online moderators, we do to ensure our outlets represent the best of spheres. These seminars were a vital ingredient for what made the Beats Festival such a vibrant success. Bringing together creative minds from across the continent and the U.S not only allowed for stimulating debate, but also a chance to exchange insights.
Of course it was ultimately the music that brought everything together and with some incredible shows on offer, we were literally spoilt for choice. James Brown incarnate Charles Bradley was undoubtedly the most electrifying, awe-inspiring act on the bill – his performance at Rotown, supported by London homegirl and Plug Research signing Szjerdene, had the entire city doing the electric slide. An artist and performer birthed from an entirely different world – they really don’t make them like that any more. Most impressively however was Buma’s foresight to invite the UK’s cult rising Hip-Hop collective Piff Gang- a genuine salute to Buma for having ears to the ground and recognising the movement. Very proud to see the boys representing the LDN.
Having taken a significantly large step forward this year with festival programming and increasing their profile in doing so, we give a shout-out to Buma Rotterdam Beats for putting on such an incredibly positive and forward thinking event. The beauty of bringing together an international community and sharing ideas on this scale is how the music communities represented, will thrive in future.
Looking forward to next year…