This past weekend in Dallas and Austin, a music festival was produced that attracted more than 50,000 people. But if you are over the age of 21, you probably had no clue it was even going on, and much less how to pronounce its name. In fact, this was the fifth year of this particular annual festival, known as JMBLYA, and it was bigger and better than ever.
The name is pronounced like the name of the traditional Creole dish made with a combination of meat, veggies and rice. Take out the vowels of "Jambalaya" to make it marketable to the Snapchat generation, book some of the best and brightest hip-hop and EDM acts around, and wait for the magic to happen.
The promotions company Scoremore has a history of producing top-notch entertainment filled with the biggest and, most important, most current and culturally relevant acts in the music business. This year's JMBLYA headliner was Chance The Rapper, with whom Scoremore has held a long-standing friendship.
In the past, Scoremore shows have showcased hot-ticket artists such as Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, J. Cole, Wiz Khalifa and many more. Scoremore was able to book them early in their career, show them love, and then count on them to headline more shows even after they broke out on a national and international level. Even with The iLLMore now a thing of SXSW's past, fans of the popular promoters have Mala Luna Music Festival (San Antonio), Neon Desert Music Festival (El Paso) and JMBLYA (Dallas & Austin) to quench their timelines and stories with content for months every year.
Here are some of the highlights from this year's action in Austin: