An all-ages festival celebrating Black History Month.
Two incredible weekends: February 6-7 and February 13-14

Curatorial Statement

The Art of Black History

Black History Month serves as a celebratory look back at the accomplishments and successes of a people, but we also need to keep our eyes on the future. Artistic lines are becoming increasingly blurred as artists and audiences become more aware – and accepting − of disciplines that jump across generations in film, fashion, music and dance.

A showcasing of "retrospective" and "vintage" black culture shows up in many new areas of contemporary art and popular culture, linking the old with the new. Youth are reclaiming and consuming the post-civil rights identities they grew up reading about, and it shows up in how they recycle black power hairstyles (afros and braids) to meet new fashion needs; in film or music (new cinema and remixed music embracing "classic" reggae, hip hop, soul music, etc.); and dance expressions (ages-old Africanisms show up in modern day hip hop and reggae dance routines).

If youth are the present and future, they should be given opportunities to demonstrate their talent on big stages, rooted on by their elders, together with their extended multi-generational village members.

There have been a number of recent firsts in this one love(d) universal diasporic black nation in all areas of artistic, cultural and civic life. Change is truly in the air. Youth exude hope.

The first weekend of Kuumba will focus on Old School/Power of Soul themes while the second weekend will explore themes of Black to the Future/One Love. Our programming will focus on black inventors, innovators and originators in areas of music, dance and film and their soon-to-be prodigious progeny. Kuumba captures the soul of a people through its lineage; the soul of Africa courses through the veins of all black African descendants across seven continents.

For more info on the

Then & Now Black History Month series, visit td.com/blackhistorymonth2010.

Kuumba Partners

An all-ages festival celebrating Black History Month. Two incredible weekends: February 6-7 and February 13-14

Curatorial Statement

An all-ages festival celebrating Black History Month.
Two incredible weekends: February 6-7 and February 13-14