The touring Madaraka Festival, an event celebrating African music and culture, will stop in Phoenix this summer.
The tour starts in Dallas in May and will end in Seattle on June 17 and 18 to celebrate Juneteenth. In between, the event will arrive downtown at The Van Buren on Saturday, June 15.
The lineup will include internationally acclaimed musicians such as Nyashinski, Eddy Kenzo, Naomi Achu, Dynamq, and Simon Javan Okelo and surprise special guests.
The headliner, Nyashinski, is one of the most celebrated artists in East Africa and a co-founding member of the hip-hop trio Kleptomaniax. Kenzo, is a grammy-nominated Ugandan singer and music executive whose albums, like “Sitya Loss,” and performances helped lead him to a 2023 Grammy Award Nomination for Global Music Performance.
Achu is a Cameroonian singer, rapper, and songwriter best known for “Alhadji,” which was played in the eighth season of “Big Brother Africa.” Savara Delvin Mudigi, commonly known as Savara, is a Kenyan singer, drummer, and co-founder, vocalist, and producer of the Sauti Sol band.
The Madaraka Festival started in Washington state in 2014. Over the past decade it has become one of the state’s largest African music festivals. In 2023, the festival reached over 25,000 people physically and 30 million virtually across six metropolitan cities in the U.S.
“Expect upscale Afro-Pop, reggae, Afrobeat, Afrohouse party vibes; good people; our award winning DJ DYNAMQ will be taking you on a musical journey across Africa,” event producer Simon Javan Okelo shared in a press release.
One Vibe Media is dedicated to giving part of the proceeds from the Madaraka Festival to One Vibe Africa whose work supports community-led change and impacts more than 3.5 million people in the U.S. and Africa.
Tickets for Madaraka Festival are available at Ticketmaster.com.
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