Major Lazer is doing their bit to help the Olympic spirt along by making a major donation to the Jamaican bobsleigh team, just as their event is starting at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
The EDM group made the donation on Friday (Feb. 13) to the “Help Jamaica Bobsleigh Achieve Olympic Dreams” GoFundMe, organized by North Country Sports Council (NCSC), a U.S.-based nonprofit.
The GoFundMe has been running since late last year, but just started getting donors about a month ago. Major Lazer’s donation is by far the biggest.
The Jamaican bobsleigh team was immortalized in the 1993 film Cool Runnings, inspired by the team’s debut at the 1988 Olympics. Olympic bobsleigh events started on Thursday (Feb. 12) with the first official training, and continue until Feb. 22.
Major Lazer currently consists of Diplo, Walshy Fire, Ape Drums, and new member America Foster. Foster is British-Jamaican, and Walshy Fire, who grew up in Florida, is of Chinese-Jamaican descent.
The group owes much to Jamaican music and culture. In a 2013 interview, Walshy Fire described Major Lazer as “basically a Jamaican sound system in its roots.”
“Everything that we do is always rooted in something dancehall or reggae,” he continued.
In other Winter Olympics-music crossover news, women’s speedskating gold medalist Jutta Leerdam recently used an audio clip from Kanye West’s 2005 Grammys acceptance speech (“Everybody want to know what I would do if I didn't win. I guess we'll never know”) in a TikTok where she showed off her newly-gotten medal.
