Afropunk in Africa? It’s about time.

An American music festival that celebrates black artists, it’s interesting that it has taken Afropunk 12 years to cross the pond and host a festival on the African continent.

But before we get into that, let’s get the lowdown on its origins, from Quartz:

The festival traces its origins to “Afro-Punk,” a 2003 documentary directed by James Spooner and produced by Matthew Morgan that chronicled the loneliness experienced by black fans of punk music and culture.

Morgan, who grew up in London and went on to manage artists, later teamed with Cooper, a former head of artist and repertoire at Universal Music, to conceive Afropunk as a reflection of the diversity of black identity.

Since then, the festival has transcended its moorings in punk to encompass hip-hop, soul, jazz and electronic music, an evolution that Cooper has said makes Afropunk “for anyone who wants to come to the party with the right mindset and who wants to be free.”

And in case you didn’t get the memo, it’s coming to South Africa. Whooo.

Held over New Year’s Eve, the Johannesburg edition is expected to attract 12 000 people each day at the city’s Constitutional Hill for a weekend of legit performances.

It is estimated that a “third of the audience will travel to Johannesburg, including from Cape Town and South Africa’s Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, as well as from Kenya and Nigeria”.

The weekend festival will see performances by Solange Knowles, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, King Tha, Blk Jks, Laura Mvula, The Brother Moves On, Nakhane and Spoek Mathambo, among other established and emerging artists.

If you don’t know any of those, you should definitely crack on with your research. Anderson .Paak and The Brother Moves On are a good start.

Jozi is the latest addition to Afropunk’s annual lineup, which sees festivals throughout the year going down in Paris, Atlanta and London after it debuted in Brooklyn. Cooper said on the new location:

We go where we have community and we go where people want us.

We’ve wanted to be on the continent, we love the culture in South Africa and we have a lot of contributors to our site who are there.

Damn straight we do. I have been wanting to go to the Brooklyn edition for years now.

The theme this year is “We the people” – a phrase at the beginning of both the US and South African constitutions and, other than the music, Afropunk is known for its stylish, beautiful people:

The hair, the jewellery, the colours!

Work to bring Afropunk to Africa began four years ago, but it:

… crystallized [sic] toward the end of 2015, when Cooper and Morgan started to scout locations. That led them to Johannesburg, where a pool of know-how for producing events, a dearth of international music festivals, and enthusiasm from local officials spurred them to select the city, as did its tendency to empty during the festive season.

Although early bird tickets were sold out in the first 30 minutes, “sales overall are said by organisers to be outpacing sales in the other cities where Afropunk has planted its flag”. You can find tickets online HERE.

And now you know.

[source:qz]