The 5th Dimension performs at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The Harlem Cultural Festival was an event celebrating African-American and African music that took place in 1969 in New York City's Marcus Garvey Park. The concerts were filmed but the footage was never released until last year's Summer of Soul a documentary directed by Questlove that took home the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, a Grammy for Best Music Film, and Sundance's Grand Jury prize. In 2023, a spiritual successor to the festival called the Harlem Festival of Culture will be launched, Pitchfork reports.
The new festival will also take place in New York City's Marcus Garvey Park. It is co-founded by Nikoa Evans, Yvonne McNair, and Mura Jackson – Jackson appeared in Summer of Soul to discuss attending the original festival when he was five years old. In addition to several days of live music, the festival will reportedly also include "social and economic development programs."
"The original event was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience—one that I will never forget," Jackson wrote in a press statement. "With this initiative, we want to create something that evokes that same sense of pride in our community that I felt on that special day in 1969. We want to authentically encapsulate the full scope - the energy, the music, the culture. We want people to understand that this Festival is being built by the people who are from, live and work in this community."