Gem & Jam Festival
John Verway*As the dance world pushes further into the nonphysical reality of the metaverse, electronic festivals continue consolidating under corporate ownership and events experience a stop-start-stop again comeback during the pandemic, the current challenges for indie dance festivals are myriad and existential.
But one such longstanding fest is holding a candle for a certain kind of bespoke, rootsy show with no corporate ties — an eclectic slate of music, along with programming like talks, workshops and yoga, and strong ties to the West Coast’s hallowed transformational festival scene.
The 14th annual Gem and Jam festival begins today (February 3) at the Pima County Fairgrounds in Tucson, Arizona. Extending through Sunday (Feb. 6), the event takes the first half of its name from its overlap with the longstanding Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase, which draws experts and enthusiasts of the field from around the country and beyond.
In fact, Gem and Jam began in 2005 as an afterparty for the Showcase, eventually growing out of Tucson’s live music venues and, in 2013, expanding into a full festival format. Since this expansion, Gem and Jam has operated via private funding. (After taking a year off in 2019, the event was one of the few festivals to happen in 2020 as it took place just weeks before the pandemic hit the U.S.)
As events cautiously return this season, approximately 6,000 people are expected to attend Gem and Jam this weekend, with the festival able to expand its footprint in the fairgrounds as crowd size grows in the coming years, as organizers expect it to. And while it will be cold this weekend in Tucson, with nightly temperatures dipping down to the mid-30s, Gem and Jam partner Josh Pollack says that hosting the event so early in the year gives it an advantage.
“Because we coincide with the Gem Show, we are kind of like the first festival of the year,” Pollack says. “We’ve been really lucky in that regard, because we don’t really have much competition with other independent or more major festivals.”
Featuring a lineup including jamtronic veterans STS9, Dirtybird founder Claude VonStroke, live electronic fusion band Dirtwire, psytrance icons Shpongle, Swedish bass favorite Liquid Stranger and many other non-mainstream electronic and live acts, the lineup hearkens back to the heady early days of California’s Lightning In a Bottle festival and Symbiosis festivals, along with the dozens of smaller, more renegade gatherings that happened throughout the region.
NEWS
Stormzy has shared that he is returning with renewed strength after a period of being “crippled by sadness” in 2025, while also pushing back against accusations that he was “selling out” following his collaboration with McDonald’s.
The collaboration was initially revealed early last year, when the UK rapper partnered with the fast food brand to launch the first Famous Order meal across the UK and Ireland. Fans were able to order his go to meal, and a selection of merchandise was released through the McDonald’s app at the same time.
The partnership sparked criticism from some quarters due to McDonald’s perceived support of Israel, with detractors arguing that the deal appeared to contradict Stormzy’s stated values. The artist, whose real name is Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., has previously spoken publicly in support of Palestine and performed at a benefit concert in January 2024 to help raise funds for humanitarian aid.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement had earlier backed an international boycott of McDonald’s after franchises in Israel distributed thousands of free meals to Israeli forces in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Around the time the collaboration was announced, fans also noticed that the rapper had deleted a social media post from October 2023 in which he voiced his support for Palestine.
Stormzy later addressed what he described as a “twisted narrative” suggesting the post was removed because of the McDonald’s partnership. He clarified that the deletion was part of a wider clean up of his social media account, during which he removed numerous older posts.
“In that post I spoke about #FreePalestine, oppression and injustice and my stance on this has not changed,” he wrote at the time. “The brands I work with can’t tell me what to do and don’t tell me what to do otherwise I wouldn’t work with them.”
Now, Stormzy has shared another reflective message to usher in 2026, explaining that the previous year had been a deeply transformative chapter in his life, marked by his efforts to push through feeling “crippled by sadness”.
Opening the lengthy message, Stormzy described facing “a few unexpected twists and turns” at the beginning of 2025, experiences that he said strengthened his resilience and “put the final nail in the coffin of my desire to be understood”.
Reflecting on the reaction to the McDonald’s deal, he noted that “a lot of you [questioned] both my character and my integrity”, adding that a younger version of himself would have felt “compelled to quickly explain himself, and let you know that there is no world in which he would ever trade his humanity for cash”.
He explained that he no longer feels that pressure, saying he “couldn’t give a single fuck to explain that fact” because he does not “need to explain anything to anybody”.
Opening up further about the challenges he faced throughout the year, the ‘Hide & Seek’ rapper said he was determined not to allow “2025 have me on the backfoot, so I came out the first quarter with one hand down my trousers and my middle finger up”.
“Then towards the end of the summer I found myself crippled by sadness and I was struggling again,” he continued, adding that his faith and close circle of friends helped him find the strength to keep going.
“I was tested physically, spiritually, professionally and creatively. I had no choice but to reassess every detail of my life,” the post later shared. “So yes it’s been painful and at times I hated it but as the year ends and I reflect I can say that I am so so so so grateful for it.”
Looking ahead, he said that he has “gained a lot of clarity around who I am as a man and who I am as an artist, and in 2026 I want to honour that clarity with execution”.
He finished by revealing that he plans to step back from social media and confirmed that work is still ongoing on his fourth studio album.
Around the period of the McDonald’s controversy, the company’s CEO Chris Kempczinski stated that the brand had not taken sides in the conflict, describing the boycotts as “disheartening and ill founded” and attributing them to “misinformation”.
Elsewhere in Stormzy news, the London artist was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University last summer in recognition of the Stormzy Scholarship to Cambridge.
The scholarship programme began in 2018 and committed to funding two Black British students each year. With additional backing from HSBC UK, the scheme expanded to support 10 students annually, resulting in 56 students having their tuition fees and living costs fully covered.
