After a weekend of celebrating global Black music in Detroit, the international Afro Nation music festival donated $100,000 to the city’s Motown Museum.
Festival organizers held an afterglow party for its staff at the museum on Monday, where they presented the funds.
“We’re very proud to be making a charitable donation of $100,000 dollars to the Motown Museum, an institution that stands as a pillar of culture in the city of Detroit and the world,” Natasha Manly, CEO of Afro Nation producers Event Horizon, said in a statement.
The city also presented Afro Nation with a Spirit of Detroit award and Certificate of Recognition from the mayor’s office for donating more than 3,000 tickets to local first responders and nonprofits.
The festival, which features Black music genres like afrobeats, hip-hop, amapiano, and R&B, was expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors. It was held at the site of the former Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects in Detroit, where Motown stars like Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, and Mary Wilson once lived.
Headliners included Nigerian singers Burna Boy and Davido, alongside made-in-Detroit acts like DeJ Loaf and Ebony Riley.
The festival first launched in Portugal in 2019. Detroit was the second U.S. city to host it, following Miami earlier this year.
Motown was founded in Detroit in 1959, and would go on to see wild success in creating and promoting Black music around the world.
The Motown Museum is undergoing a massive $55 million expansion that will grow its campus to a 50,000-square-foot world-class tourist destination with new educational exhibits and a performance theater.
@metrotimes #AfroNation made a stop in #Detroit over the weekend, and we were there to see it all. Visit our website for more photos. #detroitmetrotimes #detroitmusic #latto #burnaboy ♬ Sittin' On Top Of The World - Burna Boy
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