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Fort Greene's Afropunk Fest Set to Expand to Atlanta Next Year

By Janet Upadhye | September 30, 2014 8:47am
 Hundreds came out for the annual Afropunk Festival in Fort Greene on Aug. 24, 2014.
Afropunk Festival 2014
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FORT GREENE — The popular Afropunk Festival is set to expand to Atlanta and possibly Oakland, California, next summer, organizers recently announced.

The festival, widely known as the nation's premier event for alternative black music, draws tens of thousands of people annually to its stages in Commodore Barry Park where artists like D’Angelo, Questlove, Erykah Badu and Mos Def have headlined the event over the last 10 years.

Jocelyn Cooper, who organizes the show alongside her partner Matthew Morgan, said the the festival's website, also called Afropunk, serves as a forum for black punk rockers, some of whom feel isolated in the mostly white punk scenes of their hometowns.

The number of visitors and contributors to the site has grown exponentially over the last several years and that growth prompted the duo to expand the festival to new cities, she said.

"The website has attracted folks from all over the world," Cooper said. "In particular we have a lot of folks that live in the south that just can't make it to New York but really want this kind of show."

Cooper, who once lived in Atlanta and has family in Georgia, said it was a natural first destination for the festival.

"This has been a dream of ours for four years," she said. "Even though I was raised in Brooklyn, I am a southerner in my soul."

Cooper sees Atlanta as a game-changer in the music scene and one of the most progressive cities in the country.

"This is where Outkast's Big Boi, CeeLo Green and Janelle Monáe made music," she said. "This city is ripe for Afropunk Fest."

Cooper is also eyeing a show in Oakland, California, but there aren't official details yet.

The first Afropunk Fest debuted in 2005 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Fort Greene with approximately 250 attendees and a slew of obscure bands.

This year more than 60,000 guests and 60 bands descended upon Commodore Barry Park where D’Angelo, Lianne La Havas and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings headlined the two-day event.