IF there were such a thing as a punk-rock festival checklist, an event taking place in downtown Brooklyn this weekend would cross off all the items. Seminal band? Check. Accompanying skate park? Check. Vendors offering the latest gear? Check.
In addition to those requisite markers, this one has one more: diversity. Welcome to the Afro-Punk Festival.
“We want to expose kids to the idea that there’s a different option, a different way to be,” said Matthew Morgan, a London native who helped start the festival partly in the spirit of uplift for minority children. “If everyone wears baggy trousers, and we all look the same, how rebellious is that?”
The festival borrowed its name and inspiration from “Afro-Punk,” a 2003 film by James Spooner that examined the alienation faced by black people who were drawn to punk music and culture.
Mr. Morgan and Mr. Spooner met, toured the film-festival circuit and then created a small lineup catering to this largely ignored niche. Now the festival, which began in 2004, offers a subculture of music, crafts and recreational activities in Commodore Barry Park. Among the participants is that seminal band, Bad Brains.
Many of this year’s performers recalled the days before the festival existed, when they felt largely excluded as punk pioneers within an African-American milieu. “I went to hardcore shows,” said Shannon, the vocalist of the metal band Activator, whose punk leanings began during his childhood in Rockaway, Queens. “That was easier to deal with than riding the train through Brooklyn and being the guy with spiky” — ahem, items — “in his hair in the ’80s.”
Nigel Sylvester, the BMX rider who is doing a demonstration and judging a youth competition at the festival, shared a similar experience. “People used to call me white boy growing up,” he said, because he favored biking over football or basketball.
For the Minneapolis musician who releases rap albums under the name P.O.S., Afro-Punk was a homecoming of sorts. “I have experienced racism at rock shows,” he said, then quickly added, “but not the majority of them.”
Still, P.O.S., who has appeared at Afro-Punk as both a rapper and a member of the band Building Better Bombs, said that when he encountered the audience there, “I would see more black people with mohawks than I’d ever seen my entire life. You see people who you thought you were the only one of.”
The festival has reliably filled a void for an audience that its organizers say has grown each year. (Part of the reason it has abandoned its traditional setting, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was to handle the crowd, Mr. Morgan said.) This year, in addition to its roster of rising stars, bolder-face names like Bad Brains and Mos Def are making appearances.
But if the musicians and skaters in Afro-Punk have had their growing pains, so has the festival itself. Some grousing has appeared on afropunk.com’s public message board about the Toyotafication of the event — a nod to the corporate sponsorship, which Mr. Morgan said has so far not sustained the festival. This year Afro-Punk is charging audiences for the first time.
Whatever its future, this formerly scrappy festival is enjoying its moment. Several participants say they are finding newfound acceptance by African-Americans looking for an alternative to hip-hop culture. Triumphantly Mr. Morgan cited the multicultural crews of children skating through Brooklyn; Mr. Sylvester noted the appearance of a skateboarder in a Jay-Z video; and P.O.S. pointed out Lil Wayne’s interest in rock music.
But, Shannon cautioned: “Punk isn’t ripping your pants and sticking pins in your face. It’s just doing what you want to do and being around the people you want to be around.” In other words, it has soul.
source: NYtimes
