For an hour after Major Lazer was scheduled to begin its set at
S.O.B.’s in the small hours of Sunday morning, the screen at the back
of the stage was displaying footage from what appeared to be Carnival
in Brazil while a D.J., hidden out of sight, played soca, dancehall
reggae and R&B. By about the halfway mark this began to feel like a
brilliant conceptual stunt.
Major Lazer is a side project of the D.J.-producers Diplo, from
Philadelphia, and Switch, from London, an excursion into dancehall
under a hokey, contrived alias. It’s a tale that has unfolded over and
over in pop: boys fall in love with reggae, boys travel to Jamaica,
boys record with locals and make less convincing songs than the locals
make on their own. And what smarter way to comment on cultural
appropriation than by removing the author altogether?
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