Sunday, Aug. 29, 2010

Festival touts our diversity

It's been called our "public living room."

Next Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., City Plaza will be the place we can settle in for a Labor Day weekend of culture and community at the inaugural African-American Cultural Festival of Raleigh and Wake County.

We're encouraged to think of it as a new tradition in Midtown.

"This is the first annual, but it is certainly not the last," assures Kenneth Martin, chairman of the event's board of governors. "This will be an annual event that puts Raleigh in the artistic spotlight ... the premiere destination."

While City Plaza is the pulse point, the two-day celebration of African-American art and culture also will lead us to the adjacent Charter Square and along the 400 block of Fayetteville Street.

The plaza - with its décor of glass retail pavilions, sculptures by North Carolina artists, an interactive fountain and 50-foot light towers, will stage traditional and contemporary African and African-American music and dance.

We can check out two Chucks - Chuck Davis and the African American Dance Ensemble and festival finale, "The Godfather of Go-Go," Chuck Brown and His Large Band - or the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars, a band that melds West African reggae with rhythm and blues and New Orleans' Soul Rebels Brass Band. Shows are noon to 10 p.m. Saturday and noon to 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

All day, both days, festival-goers can explore an African-American arts and crafts market and visit food vendors. Charter Square will feature a Family Village of performances, and educational, interactive activities for school-age children led by the Magic of African Rhythm performance company.

It's all free.

Organizers, selected from various corners of city and county life, paid for everything - even after Wake County scaled back its financial support, thereby reducing by nearly half an original starting budget of about $250,000 to $300,000, which was enough to pay for big names that cost big bucks.

"Now, we're doing this for less than $100,000," Martin said, applauding the city's dedication and added support from Progress Energy, Time Warner Cable, WRAL and others who contributed money and strategic planning expertise. Knightdale and Holly Springs stepped to the plate, too. Holly Springs will host its own festival, simultaneously.

After two years' tutelage from local cultural experts and artists, and the challenge of planning amid a droopy economy, no doubt the festival must go on.

"Raleigh and Wake County have achieved a level of success in the recent past; being named one of the best places to live, one of the best places to work, one of the best places for families and single people," said Martin, owner of the Obsidian Group architectural firm. "It's time that Raleigh and Wake County have well-known events that speak to the art and culture of African-Americans."

Festival plans quench a thirst for community spirit, especially in the black community - which took some heavy hits with Raleigh's loss of the MEAC tournament to poor viability and the CIAA to Charlotte.

"We want to offer something folks can come out and not just be entertained, but also share in the history and culture of the city of Raleigh and Wake County," Martin said.

Raleigh's proven it can support the vision of a big street festival that offers a spread of art, music, crafts, history and food, and expands the experience and sense of connection of any culture, any community.

"We invite all people from all walks of life," Martin said. "We have something everybody can...learn from."

It's what festival visionaries saw on visits to other cultural festivals here in North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia.

Smartly, they looked in our back yards, too, and embraced the hotbed of culture and fun Midtown has become as host to Winterfest and First Night - and as home to our revamped-to-chic Glenwood Avenue corridor and the "urban hip" Warehouse District west of Dawson Street.

"One of the things we want to highlight," Martin said, "is that Raleigh is a happening place, especially downtown."

That's worthy of tradition, too.