NEW YORK — It’ll be 1969 all over again, when that year’s Harlem Cultural Festival makes a comeback.
Harlem businesswoman Nikoa Evans, media maverick Musa Jackson and Emmy Award-nominated event producer Yvonne McNair announced plans Wednesday to launch the inaugural Harlem Festival of Culture, inspired by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Academy Award-winning documentary “Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised).”
The series of events and music concerts held to uplift Black culture during the 1969 festival called “The Black Woodstock” will be revived in 2023 at an annual outing that Jackson said will be a “moment to show the world the vibrancy of today’s Harlem.”
The 57-year-old fifth-generation Harlem native was in attendance at the original festival and was featured in Thompson’s compelling documentary.
“The original event was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, one that I will never forget,” Jackson said in the announcement.
“With this initiative, we want to create something that evokes that same sense of pride in our community that I felt on that special day in 1969,” the founder and editor of Ambassador magazine continued. “We want to authentically encapsulate the full scope: the energy, the music, the culture. We want people to understand that this festival is being built by the people who are from, live and work in this community.”
The Harlem Festival of Culture will host indoor and outdoor live music performances and events over the course of many days and will be held at Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park – formerly Mount Morris Park, the exact site of the original Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969.
The Tony Lawrence-helmed festival, which took place on Sunday afternoons from June to August, featured stars of R&B, gospel, blues, Latin, jazz and soul, including Gladys Knight & the Pips, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, B.B. King, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson and Sly and the Family Stone.
Organizers of the new festival revival plan to build on the momentum by producing a number of events around the city, including “A Harlem Jones” open mic night at the Museum of the City of New York on April 15 in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Black cinematic classic “Love Jones.”
A special screening of “Summer of Soul” featuring cast members is also in the works for June 25 at a venue to be announced.
“Harlem Festival of Culture offers an exciting opportunity to be part of something that furthers that mission by harnessing the power of collaboration with Harlem’s civic, community, cultural and business leadership to achieve the social and economic impact the historic 1969 festival was unable to realize 50 years ago,” Evans said.
The film, now streaming on Hulu, was nominated for a Peabody Award shortly following the breakfast announcement at the Museum of the City of New York Wednesday.
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