21st Cultural Celebration Returns to Roots
By Tanya Ishikawa
Turning 21 is always an exciting time. The freedom and responsibility that accompanies the age of maturity offers new opportunities for growth and renewal, and that’s just what the organizers of the 21st annual Denver Black Arts Festival are grasping as they prepare for this year’s community celebration.
Returning to its original location in Denver’s City Park West, the festival will be highlighted by a rejuvenated art marketplace, a reinvigorated music line-up, reenergized family activities, and a refreshing array of food and gift vendors. The full schedule of events, Friday through Sunday, July 13 to 15, includes the Boogaloo Celebration Parade, an umbrella decorating contest, and a drum and drill team competition with 12 teams and 600 performers.
“We are reinventing ourselves, looking at strategies, and planning where we want to be in three to five years,” said Michael Wilhite, vendor coordinator and festival chairman. “We want to transform the organization, with a long-range goal of becoming a Tier II nonprofit.”
As a Tier II organization, the festival would be eligible for greater funding through the regional tax district, allowing the event to continue to improve and expand in the coming years. Current Tier II organizations include the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, Colorado Symphony, Children’s Museum, and Denver Film Society.
This year, the Gill Foundation donated funds to the Black Arts Festival, which allowed it to hire a marketing firm to help develop future goals. The festival is revamping its board and planning new community outreach.
“The Denver Black Arts Festival will be able to not only put itself on the map again, but we’re looking at becoming an African-American success story west of the Mississippi,” said Wilhite, who began volunteering for the festival 15 years ago, as a stage hand and sound engineer.
This year, he is heading up a planning committee of more than a dozen volunteers, who will be overseeing about 200 volunteers during the festival days.
“I see it as a need in the community, to promote African-American arts and culture, not just music,” Wilhite said.
Festival co-founder Oye Oginga agreed, “The festival is created as a dedication to the African-American community and public. It existed before Cherry Creek and many other festivals around the state.”
When he and his brother, Perry Ayers, created the arts event in 1986, he explained, “There was a great cultural void there, not only in Denver but in the state of Colorado. We still have that void. If we don’t have the festival every year, you have the empty space.”
Oginga, a multitalented artist and musician himself, said, “DBAF has been responsible for a lot of artists developing over the years.”
Co-founder Ayers elaborated, “Denver has more than 40 festivals all leaning towards the arts, but the Black Arts Festival is about the richness, the spirit, and the celebration of a people. It has a whole different perspective, a whole different flavor.”
It’s also an annual tribute to local artists.
“Artists from Chicago and across the country enhance our festival, but locals have so much talent. They bring forth the beauty and excitement that we have locally,” Ayers said.
“This year, given the theme of the festival, ‘A Legacy Unfolds,’ there is a concerted effort to work with youth and elders,” he said. “We are appealing to the public to come out and salute individuals who’ve made contributions over the years, and give them kudos.”
Friday night, the Keepers of the Culture reception will honor 25 to 30 community art leaders. Starting on Friday afternoon and continuing throughout the festival, youth and children’s activities will include hands-on art-making, a historical scavenger hunt, and dance clinics.
“Two thousand-plus kids from across the metro area will come and live and learn about African-American cultural arts,” he said.
Ayers believes there’s something for just about everyone in Black artwork, due to its “tremendous variety.”
Materials used by Black artists run the gamut, including fiber, glass, photos, acrylic, oils, charcoal, collage, wood, stone, and bronze – all of which will appear at this year’s festival.
Themes are from scenic to political and historic, from pretty to thought-provoking, but “more than anything, the art depicts and tells the African-American story. It gives color, gives excitement, gives feeling and emotion, and is not intimidating,” Ayers said.
The festival is one of the rare times you can even find some of the original and highly collectible items.
“I know artists who won’t even show in other retail locations. They are obsessive and possessive of their original work. We try to convince them it needs to be exhibited and seen,” Ayers said.
2007 will be the tenth year for artist Barrett Ohene, 37, to display at Denver’s festival. He is a mosaic artist from Ghana in West Africa, who now lives in Maryland and travels to U.S. festivals and art shows to sell his work.
“Black arts festivals have a special place for all the artists who have original works,” he said.
Ohene creates intricate hand-made, poster-size, silk thread mosaics, which were historically decorations for kings and aristocrats in Africa. He learned the art from his older brother, Emmanuel Yeboah. Since one large piece can take up to 80 hours to create, the brothers have begun training other artists to assist them.
Silk thread art “is not so much common in the U.S., but it is beginning to catch up. I mostly show around the East Coast and Chicago,” said Ohene from California where he is currently showing his work.
Their subjects of their mosaics range from jazz pieces and modern themes to traditional cultural scenes. Ohene is particularly fond of his art when it incorporates cultural symbolism.
“The meaning reminds us of who we are, and where we are going,” he said.
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