The Capital Hip Hop Soul Festival!

Maceo Thomas and Khadijah Coleman bring you the hottest east of the river event.

No plans for today? Perhaps wherever you are needs a little step in the right direction? If so, allow me to indulge you and serve as your weekend event planner.

Right now (read: currently going on so after reading this post, make a move) at Marvin Gaye Park in NE DC is hottest, both weather and music wise, event in the city. The Capital Hip Hop Soul Festival brings together music, edibles, vendors and a relaxed vibe. The perfect accessories for a day of fun in my opinion.

Call me lucky but I had an opportunity to catch up with one of the organizers of this event, Maceo Thomas, to provide my dear readers with a little more information and to prepare you in advance for next year's festival!

 What should one expect by attending the festival?

The music is going to be hot. The artists are going to be walking around and talking to guests. We will have food vendors, musicians selling their CDs and authors selling books. We may even have a small business that does home repair. For vendors, this is a great place to get some exposure.

What artists are slated to perform?

In no particular order...The 5th L; Kenny Wesley; Marcell and the Truth, Anonamas, Enoch the 7th Prophet; Lucky Dub, Labtekwon, and Mahoganee. {there are several more but I'd literally be giving away all of the goods at this point}

Why the need for an event such as this?

There are not enough venues to hear strong positive hip hop soul music in DC, especially if you have to get up and go to work in the morning. That is only because the genre has been co-opted by strong business people selling "music" that many of us don't bother listening to anymore. So, we have to look "underground" for independent artists who are artful. I realized that I personally had no real connection to these artists and wanted to discover more. So, this is an educational project for me. Khadijah and I hooked up and decided to do this together. She's an organizational/ public relations genius. In order to do some things that had to be done like writing checks, we decided to put a business entity together. That's how Liberated Muse Productions was born. We put the whole thing together. We fundraise by getting vendors to let us market their products and service through the event. If we don't raise the money, we end up writing the check.

What advice do you have for artists interested in performing next year?

First, get in touch with us early. The easiest way is to join our community of artists on-line at www.liberatedmuse.com. All of our announcements go through that network first. We have a mission to support positive art from the DC metropolitan area. If you do not have any DC connection, please save your time.

Are there any artists that you'd like to work with that you haven't as of yet?

I'm about this close to giving away my first born to get Yahzarah to perform. A Duke Ellington grad, she has strong DC roots. She is a superstar in my book.

I happen to think that Yahzarah is fabulous as well!