Saturday will be filled with music, creativity and heritage at the San Diego Black Arts and Culture District Music Festival.
Lyrical Groove’s Kendrick Dial will be part of the show with a sound he calls “spoken soul,” which he said is “spoken word, its soul, its jazz, its hip hop — its all these elements of what we historically call Black music. So there's a Gospel feeling to it, there's a message base.”
The music festival is happening just outside of the Black Arts and Culture District in San Diego’s Encanto neighborhood.
It’s an event curated by Kamau Kenyatta, a Grammy-award winning producer who teaches music at UC San Diego.
“This is all San Diego talent,” Kenyatta said about the musical acts taking the stage.
Besides Kendrick Dial and Lyrical Groove, there will be live performances from other local artists like Daneen Wilburn, Geminelle and Rebecca Jade.
“We're going to hear neo soul, spoken word, R&B,” Kenyatta said. “Daneen came from the church — St. Stephen's church, right up the hill — and Rebecca, a world traveler, bringing in her original music which has many, many influences.”
There will also be local food vendors, visual art displays and cultural exhibits.
“It's really a tribute to Black Music Month, which is in June. So we piggy-backed on that to create this event,” said Gaidi Finnie, executive director of the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Arts, which oversees funding in the district.
He said this is the first ever Black Arts and Culture District Music Festival, and he hopes it will become an annual event.
Dial expects the festival to uplift and inspire the local community and provide a safe haven through a sense of family.
“The whole purpose of us even doing this is to bring that economic independence and that artistic expression and sense of community back to this space in a real way,” Dial said about the Black Arts and Culture District.
The music festival is a free event for the public and takes place at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Park, Saturday, June 29 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
