Attendees coming to the free all-day event will get to experience African music and culture with performances by rising stars in the Afrobeats music genre, such as Ghana’s King Promise and Bad Boy Timz from Nigeria as well as New Jersey artists such as Zawadi African Dance and the Universal African Dance and Drum Ensemble.
The public will also get to view the artwork of Mohammed Awudu, an award-winning visual contemporary artist from Ghana, and of those artists who are part of the Newark-based YENDOR arts organization.
There will also be opportunities for attendees to check out Black-owned businesses with pop-up shops and a variety of vendors offering food and beverages. And there will be a children’s village with interactive activities and games for families.
One of the people who will be enjoying the festivities is Linda Baraka, the wife of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who helped create the Afro Beat Fest in 2017.
Baraka said that the festival was formed to recognize those who settled in Newark from various African countries like her parents, originally from Ghana, and to bring back a celebration from her youth that paid homage to her family’s homeland.
“When I was younger, my father was part of an organization called Africa Newark and they held an African festival similar to Afro Beat, it was called Africa Newark back then, in the same park, same sort of concept, but ours is a more updated version,” Baraka said.
Baraka said the Afro Beat Fest, organized in collaboration with the Newark City Parks Foundation and Newark Happening, also continues the tradition of popular ethnic festivals in the city that includes the Portugal Day Festival and the Puerto Rican Day Parade.
She said the return of the festival came out of vendors and performers who had taken part in the last one in 2019 approaching her about bringing it back after it had shut down due to the COVID pandemic.
She also noted that it was a good time to hold the festival because of the growing popularity of the Afrobeats music genre, which describes popular music from West Africa and the African diaspora done by celebrated artists like Wizkid and Burna Boy, who did a sold-out concert last weekend at Citi Field in Queens.
“The genre itself has grown, it’s all over the radio, it’s all over TV. It’s on the BET Awards, the Grammys. That was not happening in 2017,” Baraka said. “So, now the music is popular, and we had already brought the festival itself to the city. They complement each other.”
