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After being away from Montreal for the summer, I found myself with a deep craving for live music that hadn’t quite been satiated. I was very eager to attend the Santigold show at L’Olympia on Tuesday night, and it absolutely did not disappoint as a reintroduction to live music in

Montreal. There is a certain energy I’ve found in crowds here, and American genre-bending artist, Santigold, seemed to agree. “You guys do it differently here,” she said as crowd members flooded on stage after an invitation to dance with her. There was never a dull moment during this eventful show. 

For the past two decades, the end of July and the beginning of August in Montreal have become synonymous with the city’s annual music festival Osheaga. Having grown up in Montreal, Osheaga was in many ways the (musical) green light at the end of the dock - the pinnacle of good music -whatever that means- in the eyes of a much younger version of myself. While I still went this year, perhaps it was not with the same level of enthusiasm and eagerness my former-self once felt. The festival, which has taken a life of its own, often overshadows other events happening in the city. For one weekend, and whether you like it or not, Osheaga takes over the city, attracting what seems to be a growing crowd each year. 

There are a multitude of first-world problems that concertgoers face every month. It could be that you forgot your good-quality earplugs, or maybe you were even slightly inconvenienced by having to dump out your water bottle before entering the venue. But, probably the most frustrating of all: when two shows you’ve been anticipating for months end up falling on the same date. But sometimes, by pure luck, you can end up seeing those two shows pair together into one, which is exactly what happened on Friday at the Fairmount Theatre when Cola and Snooper performed on the same bill, after both of Cola’s opening bands, Shunk and Yves Jarvis, had cancelled.

From the moment I arrived at the nineteenth edition of Shazamfest, there was not a minute that passed without something exciting or, at the very least, interesting happening. As I approached the main site, following the decorated path from the car park, the Eastern Township fusion dance troupe Tribal Roses had just gotten underway. Led by Catherine De Sève, the troupe mixes eastern dance and western electronic music. It was punctuated with flamboyant costumes and a fair amount of audience participation, which at Shazamfest culminated in one big mass dance-a-thon to close out the show.