Lizel Strömberg

LIVEFEST - 1 Day Festival at Liseberg
 
My concert summer started with an 1 Day Festival with a hiphop theme. I'm not as familiar with the Swedish hiphop/R&B scene compared to the pop scene. I've been wanting to take a step into the more urban and hiphop scene for a while. When I saw that Liseberg was going to hold LIVEFEST I thought it was a great opportunity for me to explore the hiphop scene with some of the known artists that are current today. The performing artists at LIVEFEST were: 
* AMWIN
* Cherrie
* Ison & Fille
* Z.E
Before every concert I photograph, I always try to do research of the artists that I'm about to see. It doesn't matter if I've seen them before or not, I want to have a fresh impression of them on stage and what songs they have recently released. One particular thing I noticed when doing research was the amount of content there was of each artist. They have music videos for numerous of their songs and artwork for their singles that are more than a plain white background. 
When heading to the event, I had no expections at all of what I was about to see on stage that day. I only knew one or two songs by 3 of the artists. "Goodbye" by AMWIN, "Lämna Han" & "Aldrig Igen (Må sådär) by Cherrie. Ison & Fille has been around for quite some time so there were more of their songs that I've heard about such as "Sena Nätter, Tomma Glas", "Jag Skrattar Idag" and "Länge Leve Vi". 
First up was AMWIN, which is Amanda Winberg who participated in Swedish Idol 2015 where she came second. I've seen her name pop up several times throughout the past few years but I haven't payed that much attention to her music and before the show I only knew her by her name Amanda Winberg. 
I was pleasant surprised over how much I ended up liking AMWIN's set. Here's a list of some of the things I liked the most about seeing AMWIN's show!
THE BACKDROP
I really appreciated that they had a backdrop and the fact it wasn't all black. I've seen tons of people having a black backdrop which most of the time make the people on stage disappear in the background. Specially when they are wearing black clothes. 
A SET WITH ONLY WOMEN
The industry is dominated by men and women needs to be able to get their spotlight as well. It made me very happy to see a set with only women since it's so rare to see women working behind the front artist. 
THE SEQUINS
I see details and I was loving the sequins in AMWIN's outfit. Her outfit was casual but because her pants had sequins it made more to her outfit. 
CHOREOGRAPHY
Believe it or not, THEY ACTUALLY HAD CHOREOGRAPHY in SEVERAL of their numbers. I don't think you understand how happy I got when I saw they had thought about this for their show! I see a lot of different Swedish artists perform live and it's incredible rare that they have dancers and choreography included in their set. And if they do, the main artists doesn't usually dance along as much as the dancers. This detail or main thing depending how you see it, was something that enhanced the whole show. I also liked that the DJ was hyping and jumping along too. Kudos to them for doing the extra effort into making the set more!
Cherrie is a somali R&B artist which debuted in 2015 with the song "Tabanja". She is an awardwinning artist who has won Swedish Grammy "This Year's hiphop/soul" and also at P3 Guld. Cherrie was one of the artists in this lineup that I actually have been listening to a bit, my brother has also been playing her songs at home. 
The first thing I noticed in Cherrie´s set was her mic stand. It had big flowers as decoration which I liked. It was just a small issue with the flower which was that they were too high on the mic stand. The flowers would cover a big part of Cherrie's face most of the time, which I think was unfortunate since it was a nice detail. Luckily she moved away from the mic stand time to time. 
You could tell by her audience that her target group is mainly people from the hood. With her music she wants to inspire people and show a way out of the darkness. In one part of the show she said: "You can accomplish whatever you wat in life as long as you believe in yourself. Specially us from the ghetto and people coming from broken homes. Don't lose hope, things get better".
It was so much fun hearing "Lämna Han" live and seeing how the audience was singing along to every word of it, the same goes to "Aldrig igen". It was specially fun since I've been listening to them quite a lot this past year. 
You could feel Cherrie's happiness through the whole set, she couldn't stop smiling!
ISON & FILLE is a hiphop duo and has been in the game for about 20 years now. They have been an act which comes up once in a while. I've seen Ison & Fille one or two times before so they are not completely new for me. Even though I've known about them for quite some time I have never really dig into their music. There has been a couple of songs over the years that I've been listening such as: "Stationen" & "För Alla Dom".
I don't remember that much of my previous experiences from their shows because that's a long time ago and only saw a part of it. First thing that came to mind before the show started was the fact they didn't had a customize backdrop, they only had a black background. I think that was very unfortunate because there were people walkiing by during the show but they wouldn't know who was on stage and because of the dark background Ison & Fille blended in to it.
There were some small adjuments in Ison & Fille's presentation I wished they had done. Such as more light on them specially since they were wearing all black clothes. The light on their DJ was actually nice so that's a thumbs up!
The type of music they make and how they want to move on stage might not envolve choreography but I think being more synced would enhance their performance more. 
I can assure you there were good things about Ison & Fille's show as well! Both of them were energetic, connected with their audience by interacting with people from stage and hyping them up. One particular thing that I really liked about Ison & Fille was the fact they showed the audience that they had knowledge of Göteborg and their audience. They would mentioned Göteborg several times but also point out that they knew particular areas in Göteborg where the fans were from. For example, Bergsjön and Hammarkullen. By letting the audience know which city they are visiting and the different areas aroiund it, creates a connection between the artist and the listener on another level. On top of that they would also call some people out in the audience to make them seen.
"Galen/Lever så här" & "Från Hjärtat" (Highwon) is one of Ison & Fille's songs that I know more well than others. They were released in 2011, 2010 and it was very fun to hear how the audience still know the lyrircs to them.  
I had never heard about Z.E before looking at the lineup for Livefest. Z.E is a hiphop artist from Stockholm, his music career started in 2017. He is one of the founders for the record label Team Platina together with Gringo, Biggie Juke and Jiggz. Which also have their own clothing line.
Before I get into my impressions of his show, I'm going to be completely honest and say, the kind of music Z.E releases is not my type of music at all. What I will write about the show is mainly by my impressions as someone who isn't really into the hiphop scene right now but someone who has seen a lot of different concerts.
First off, they had two DJ's who made a preshow together. The preshow also had an act participate which is named "Karaktärer". At the time had no knowledge about them at all. He came on to the stage with this big pillow as a huge "stomach" and something put into his mouth to impersonate someone using "snus". For someone who had no idea who he was, I was very confused over the whole act and didn't knew if it was a part of Z.E's set or "Karaktärer" being it's own thing. Now I know they are a some kind of comedy gimmick and creates overdramtic charaters, I understand how it can appeal to people and be something funny. It was simply not something for me. 
A lot of questions came to mind seeing Z.E set. For example, all the people on stage? I appreciate the thought about having friends on stage to particapte in the show and it's nice of Z.E to let them join. But it was weird how the people in the back was most of the time standing there doing nothing but filming on their phones. If they had more of a plan of what the people on stage could put into the show, they could have enhance Z.E set more. 
There were no doubt that the audience knew the songs and were singing along to the lyrics. In advance Z.E was definitely the act who people were looking forward the most to see that day. 
Z.E had dancers, thoughtful outfits, camera team, DJ's and a comedy gimmick to the show which is all great. But the presentation didn't felt completely done but I think there's a lot of potential to become something more! They have made the effort to have people in these different roles, they only need to do some adjustments so they will work better together. 
Overall I was very glad that I took the opportunity to attend LIVEFEST and get a little introduction to the hiphop/R&B scene. I think there's content for me to explore and could be fun to find something new to listen to but also new people to capture.
 
That was all for this time, hope you enjoyed my post of my first show day of this season! 
Until next time, ingat!
/Lizel