People attending One Love this weekend can expect new surprises at the festival, including a new stage. Source: One Love NZ Festival, Facebook
The countdown is on for one of the world’s biggest reggae festivals, One Love, taking place this weekend in Tauranga and organisers say this year’s event is going to be bigger and better.
Festival director Pato Alvarez and his team have spent the last 10 months preparing the festival.
“Our production and lighting show is the biggest to date. We always try to make it better than previous years and also we have a new stage, says Alvarez.
“There are many other surprises that people will find when they get to One Love.”
This year the festival is expecting close to 20,000 people with more than 18,000 tickets sold already.
“It has continued to grow year on year, which is fantastic! It started out at 4,000 then went to 10,000, then to 16,000 and a massive 20,000 last year."
Alvarez confirms that 80 to 90% of patrons are Māori and Pacific.
“I think Māori and Polynesian grow up with reggae music from when they are kids and it's part of their soundtrack at home. It is such good-feeling music.”
One highlight for Alvarez over the years was in 2016 when tens of thousands of concert-goers sang altogether and then did a spontaneous en masse haka at the festival.
"One of the biggest [was] seeing our brother George FIJI Veikoso singing to 20,000 people E Papa Waiari and everyone singing along with him. It was crazy!"
Alvarez says One Love is one of the biggest reggae festivals in the world and 60% of the bands performing this year are from Aotearoa.
Some of the musicians in the 2018 line-up include Stan Walker, Tomorrow People, Kora, General Fiyah, Three Houses Down, Shaggy, MAGIC! and Common Kings.
One Love is to be held at the Tauranga Domain on January 27 and 28.
