Ari Lennox, Masego, and More Headline This Year’s Afropunk Festival

This year’s Afropunk festival will be streaming October 23-25.

With the COVID-19 pandemic raging on, festival season has been wiped out. On Thursday, however, Afropunk announced it’d be throwing a virtual festival in two weeks. Headliners include Smino, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ari Lennox, and more. Additionally, the event will host speakers like Amanda Seales and Dulcé Sloan of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

“This year’s festival holds a very special place in our hearts,” the festival promoters wrote on Instagram. “While we will convene during one of the most uncertain of times we trust that this global uncertainty will connect us deeper than ever before. While the thought of losing some things (like mosh pits) at this year’s festival due its digital form hurts, we know that what is gained is just as beautiful.”

More performers include serpentwithfeet, Afrobeats singer Tiwa Savage, Houston’s Tobe Ngiwe, as well as Mereba, Masego, and Moses Sumney. The festival will be free to stream. RSVP for Planet Afropunk now on the official Afropunk site.

“For the first time,” the statement continues, “our entire global community will be in the same room. We get to witness artists from each other’s hometowns all together. The power of music is to unite, and we get to take it one step forward. This October, Afropunk Brooklyn, Paris, Joburg, Atlanta, Brazil, London, and everyone who we love just as much who visit us from around the world will get to experience the glory of us…together. That’s pretty damn special to us.”