Jar Jar Jam

Jar Jar Jam was an off-site concert and dance event held on Saturday, May 1, 1999, during Star Wars Celebration I. The event ran from 9:00 p.m. to midnight at the Temple Events Center in Denver and featured Ahmed Best, who portrayed Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. DJ K-Nee also appeared.

The event was separately ticketed, with admission limited to 650 tickets. Tickets were branded with Star Wars Insider and Lucasfilm Ltd. logos and listed the event as “Jar Jar Jam with Ahmed Best.” The event gave Celebration attendees a late-night gathering away from the main convention site, combining live music, dancing, costumed fans and appearances by members of the Episode I cast and production team.

Ahmed Best performed with a band in a set that lasted roughly 75 minutes and moved through hip-hop, rock and dance music. Best opened with a human beatbox version of John Williams’ Star Wars theme before the band began playing. The event drew about 400 attendees, many of them in costume, including stormtroopers, Boba Fett costumers, Princess Leia costumers and Darth Vader.

Ray Park, who played Darth Maul, introduced Best and the band at the start of the show. Park later joined the energy of the event himself, rapping and breakdancing during the night. Best also rapped on stage, turning the event into a loose cast-and-fan party rather than a standard convention appearance.

Several Episode I figures attended, including Jake Lloyd, Madison Lloyd, Pernilla August, Rick McCallum and Lucasfilm public relations chief Lynne Hale. Near the end of the performance, Best brought McCallum onstage and led the crowd in a chant of “Go Ricky, go Ricky, go!”

Jar Jar Jam became one of the more unusual special events from Celebration I. While much of the weekend centered on panels, exhibits, autograph sessions and early promotion for The Phantom Menace, Jar Jar Jam gave fans a more informal after-hours experience built around music, dancing and direct interaction with people connected to the new film. Its small capacity, off-site venue and late-1990s prequel-era atmosphere have made it one of the more memorable oddities from the first Star Wars Celebration.

Star Wars Celebration I’s show floor was centered around the Episode I Pavilion inside the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum hangar, with additional activity areas, autograph spaces and vendor sections placed around the museum grounds. Unlike later Celebrations, the layout combined traditional exhibitor booths with museum displays, Lucasfilm archive pieces, sponsor areas and outdoor event spaces.

The main hangar included several large-scale displays tied to both the original trilogy and The Phantom Menace. Major exhibit areas included the Lucasfilm Archives, a life-sized X-wing display, an Anakin Skywalker podracer display and a Timelines exhibit. A Naboo Fighter was positioned near the hangar entrance area, while the museum’s existing aviation displays remained visible throughout the space.

Interactive and activity-focused areas were also part of the floor. Gamescape LucasArts represented the video game presence at the event, with the new Star Wars: Episode I Racer among the featured experiences. Decipher had both a main booth and a separate Decipher Tournament Room for the Star Wars Customizable Card Game. The grounds also included an Estes Rocket Launch Area, a Last One Standing Trivia Contest area and an Autographs & Character Photos exhibitor section outside the main hangar.

The exhibitor area featured a mix of Star Wars licensees, publishers, toy companies, apparel brands and promotional partners. Companies and booths shown on the official program map included Hasbro, LEGO, Decipher, Pepsi, DK, Dark Horse, Del Rey / Random House, Topps, Scholastic, Hallmark, Don Post Studios, Applause, ERTL, Rubie’s Costume Co., Liquid Blue, WestPoint Stevens, Dynacraft, Advanced Graphics, V.F. Knitwear, Hope Industries, PEZ / Colgate, Star Wars Insider, Star Wars Kids, StarWars.com and Tri Con. A dedicated Star Wars Celebration Store sold official event merchandise and exclusive Star Wars items.

Star Wars Celebration I featured an official Celebration Store with event merchandise and Star Wars toys. Merchandise included apparel, a John Alvin art poster, an Alvin art magnet, a gold-tone Celebration pin and a Fan Club-exclusive reproduction badge set. The store also sold The Phantom Menace Hasbro figures for $8 each ahead of their wider retail release, along with a special-cover edition of The Phantom Menace novelization signed by Terry Brooks.

For many attendees, Star Wars Celebration I was defined by the collision of enormous anticipation and difficult conditions. The event opened only weeks before the release of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, giving fans one of their first large-scale opportunities to gather around the return of Star Wars to theaters. The official material presented the event as a fan-focused gathering, with Dan Madsen describing the original goal as a place where fans could come together, share their interest, and experience Star Wars in a dedicated environment. He later said the organizers were trying to create an event “by fans, for fans,” built around both the history of Star Wars and its future at the dawn of Episode I.

That excitement was immediately tested by the weather. Thousands of fans waited outside Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in cold rain before entering the show. Once the doors opened, the main hangar filled quickly, with attendees moving into a space filled with Lucasfilm Archives props, LucasArts gaming areas, Star Wars timelines, licensee booths, and other displays. The opening moments captured both sides of the event: fans were soaked and crowded, but once inside they were surrounded by a kind of Star Wars environment that had never existed on this scale before.

The rain became the defining practical challenge of the weekend. Much of the event depended on tents and temporary structures, and the bad weather exposed the limits of that setup. The grounds became muddy, tents leaked, puddles formed, and some fans spent long stretches waiting outside. Later recollections described winding lines, costumed Jedi trying to keep robes out of the mud, and the main indoor licensee area becoming difficult to access because the Fire Marshal limited capacity. Since the hangar was warm and dry, attendees were slow to leave, which created long pauses for those still waiting outside.

The dealer and collector experience also reflected the event’s improvised nature. Some attendees remembered rare and unusual items being offered for sale, but the dealer tent leaked, and water damaged or threatened merchandise. The first Celebration Collecting Track came together only shortly before the event, with panels held in a small, open-sided tent where people outside in the rain could listen. There was no announced schedule, no slides, and no video projection; instead, collectors brought rare items to show in person.

At the same time, the weekend created moments that attendees remembered warmly. Anthony Daniels became one of the most important figures in the fan experience, both as the main stage host and as a personal presence for fans stuck in the rain. Madsen later credited Daniels with going outside under an umbrella to meet and entertain people waiting in line. One fan recalled sharing an umbrella with a stranger before realizing it was Daniels.

Programming gave the weekend its strongest emotional payoff. The opening ceremony included video greetings from Ian McDiarmid, John Williams, Ewan McGregor, and George Lucas, a moment of silence for the victims of the Columbine High School tragedy, a video greeting from Japanese fans, and the world premiere of the “Duel of the Fates” music video. The crowd reaction to “Duel of the Fates” became one of the clearest examples of the prequel-era excitement that carried the event through its logistical problems.

Other fan-facing moments added to the feeling that Celebration I was something new. R2-D2 made a surprise appearance on Stage A while Daniels was speaking, prompting a huge response from the crowd and leading into a playful Q&A in which Daniels “translated” R2’s answers. Ray Park appeared before American fans ahead of The Phantom Menace, took questions, and demonstrated his martial arts skills. Later memories also singled out Jake Lloyd, Pernilla August, Ahmed Best, the Jar Jar Jam, Ray Park breakdancing, and fans approaching Rick McCallum with questions about the film and the future of Star Wars.

The result was an event that could be frustrating and magical in the same day. Fans dealt with mud, rain, leaks, crowding, and uneven organization, yet many also experienced the weekend as a rare gathering of people who shared the same excitement. One attendee later compared the atmosphere to a school dance for Star Wars fans, a place where people simply wanted to gather and enjoy being part of the same community.

Celebration I established the basic shape of what Star Wars Celebration would become: official Lucasfilm involvement, major guest appearances, hosted stage programming, behind-the-scenes presentations, fan collecting, costuming, merchandise, props, gaming, and a strong sense of fan community. In 1999, those pieces were still rough and experimental, but the event proved that Star Wars fandom could support a large, dedicated convention of its own.

Its legacy is inseparable from the rain. The weather created real problems for attendees and organizers, but it also became part of the event’s identity. Rick McCallum reportedly compared the weekend to “Woodstock for Star Wars fans,” a phrase that captured how the mud and inconvenience became part of the shared memory rather than simply a failure of planning. Steve Sansweet later said that despite the rain and problems, people loved the event and became proud to say they had “survived Celebration I.”

The event also left a physical legacy in Denver. The life-size X-wing brought to the event was later given permanently to Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum, where Madsen said it became one of the museum’s most popular displays. That connection gave Celebration I a lasting presence at the site long after the tents came down.

More broadly, Celebration I became the origin point for the modern Star Wars convention tradition. It began as a one-time fan gathering tied to the release of The Phantom Menace, but its success showed Lucasfilm, the Fan Club, and the fan community that there was a lasting appetite for official Star Wars events. The weekend’s rough edges helped define its mythology: Celebration I was remembered as wet, crowded, muddy, heartfelt, and historic, the first large-scale proof that Star Wars fandom could gather as a community around the saga itself.