By Essence ·October 22, 2020October 22, 2020
The countdown to AFROPUNK 2020 is almost officially over!
Kicking off on Friday, October 23, the anticipated 3-day cultural experience will bring together the largest virtual gathering of the worldwide Black creative community, with an all-star lineup featuring a who’s who in music, television, activism and more.
For the first time in the event’s 15-year history,Oscar and Grammy award-winning Chicago rapper Common will perform, along Ari Lennox, Tiwa Savage, Masego, Smino and Moses Sumney, Mayra Andrade, Dua Saleh, genre-fluid band ASIATICA, North Carolina experimental four-piece BLACK HAÜS, Kenyan Nyege Nyege affiliate and rapper MC Yallah, and Soweto punk rockers TCYIF alongside the previously-announced Ari Lennox, Tiwa Savage, Moses Sumney, and Smino just to name a few. Appropriately themed ““PLANET AFROPUNK: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE IS BLACK.”,the cultural explosion is set to be co-hosted by actress and UNHCR Ambassador Nomzamo Mbatha, Bahia cool hunter and entrepreneur Loo Nascimento, and OG AFROPUNK fam Gitoo.
Following the events of this year, PLANET AFROPUNK has been designed to encourage the continued live interaction, activism and debate on racial justice normally associated with its physical festival. There will be space curated to explore everything from politics and social justice, meditation and Black self-care, through to the trend-setting cultural hot-takes emanating within the Black community. With this year’s festival taking place just ten days before the US 2020 presidential election, the intent of these conversations will be to bring momentum to community engagement, find collective solutions to long-standing issues affecting the Black community and to, most of all, encourage the AFROPUNK community to vote.
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The experience will also feature a premiere list of speakers including actor and activist Jesse Williams, activist Tamika D. Mallory, comedian and actress Amanda Seales, musician Robert Glasper, singer-songwriter and model Dawn Richard and many more.
“Now more than ever we need the resilience and creativity of our community to keep our culture alive and thriving. In creating PLANET AFROPUNK we’ve designed a safe space for our community to celebrate and inspire, cry and shout, and to heal and motivate one another. AFROPUNK’s approach to activism and fighting oppression has always been to celebrate Black music, art and culture – and ultimately Black joy. The AFROPUNK community is global, and we’ve built this planet to connect seamlessly. All across the world we are connecting in sameness and in difference to discover the joy in our Blackness, but also in the visual and musical artists and authors. And this is what AFROPUNK enables.”
During the completely free virtual experience, festival-goers will have the opportunity donate funds to several social justice organizations including Black Futures Lab, Color of Change, Movement for Black Lives, Equal Justice Initiative, Fair Count, and The Bail Project among others.
For more details and to RSVP, visit PLANETAFROPUNK.com.
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