Jerk x Jollof event series thrives amidst Afrobeat boom

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*previous Holiday J x J event in Detroit

Detroit-born Jerk x Jollof event series thrives amid Afrobeat boom​

August 4, 2022

On a rainy Thursday night in July, a flood of people crowded the bar on the ground floor at Delmar. It’s after midnight and concertgoers have migrated from the Aretha Franklin Amphitheater to the Greektown bar and lounge.
Burna Boy, a Grammy Award-winning, Nigerian Afrobeat singer is in town for a stop on the tour for his sixth studio album, “Love, Damini,” and Delmar is the site for a Thursday edition of the Afro-Caribbean event series Jerk x Jollof to coincide with the concert.
There are women in bodycon dresses slow-whining to the sounds of DJ Blakito spinning a mix of Afrobeat and dancehall music, and men whose eyes peek below trendy bucket hats. Upstairs, on the rooftop patio — where the party started until an unexpected torrential downpour prompted a scenery change — there is a food station kitty cornered to a pink neon light. The lyric, “It was all a dream” casts a glow on tin basins of jollof and coconut rice, sweet plantains and jerk chicken with varying levels of spice.

Jerk x Jollof organizers had mere days to plan the gathering and still, it’s a packed house and the party goes into the wee hours of the night.
“That was sheer consumer demand,” says Jerk x Jollof founder Brendan Asante. “It was really a unique opportunity for what was probably the biggest Afrobeat show that Detroit has had thus far, so we had to activate on that day — and it ended up working out for us.”

A last-minute, sold-out event would have been unthinkable for Asante prior to Jerk x Jollof’s first pop-up event in Ann Arbor in 2014 when metro Detroit’s Afro-Caribbean community seemed small, and growing up Ghanaian felt anything but cool to the Auburn Hills native and eventual University of Michigan undergrad. When the event series officially launched in 2016, the concept of celebrating African and Caribbean cultures through music and dishes like Caribbean jerk chicken and African jollof rice manifested as a fun party among, namely, UM students with dishes inspired by Asante’s mother’s home cooking.


Today, attendees line the streets of downtown Detroit to file into The Belt, the home base for Jerk x Jollof events. There are afterparties at local watering holes like The Marble Bar and The Magic Stick for partygoers who desire to carry the energy of Jerk x Jollof into the early morning. The event series has expanded to other cities, such as Los Angeles and Washington, DC — it’s even gone international with a debut at the famed African culture festival Afrochella in Ghana in 2019 and a stop in Toronto in July.

“I’m sure a lot of African kids can identify: It wasn’t cool to embrace where you’re from. People wouldn’t be able to comprehend it,” Asante says.
Now that the event series has soared to new heights, Asante has seen a shift in the perception of Afro-Caribbean culture. He’s also observed an increase in curiosity to explore the diaspora.
“The tone has completely changed,” he says. “I love that we’re an additive to making Afro-Caribbean culture that much more of a cornerstone for both Detroit and the US at large.”
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The Afrobeat Boom​

Asante, who is a trained vocalist and head of music programming at Deluxx Fluxx, the underground dance club and arcade in The Belt, credits recent popularity of the Afrobeat genre for a wider appreciation for Afro-Caribbean culture.
“With any wave,” he said, “there are people who are catching it early, there are people who are catching it when it’s at its peak and then there are people who are catching it when it splashes.”

Asante said those who grew up in households where Afrobeat, Soca and dancehall were prevalent have long appreciated Afro-Caribbean cultures, whereas others were introduced by mainstream songs, such as Drake’s “One Dance” and Rihanna’s “Work” for an awakening.
“Those joints were so well timed in regard to making the wave in US culture splash so hard,” he said.
In a sense, they were a gateway to the Afrobeat boom that exists today, catapulting the genre to a mainstream stage, thus creating a path for Afro-Caribbeans like Asante to share their culture with the metro Detroit community.

An appetite for Afro-Caribbean cuisine​

The rise of Afrobeat music and social media presence may have led to an appetite for African and Caribbean foods in the Detroit area and beyond.
In the early days of Jerk x Jollof, the incorporation of the African spiced rice dish served as an intro to West African cuisine, whereas today, jollof wars depicting the age-old rivalry between Ghanaian and Nigerian preparations of the dish have made their way into mainstream memedom. Fufu challenges, where GenZ-ers flock to African restaurants for a taste of the doughy mound of kneaded starches, have gone TikTok-viral, making local establishments like Nigerian food truck Fork in Nigeria and Yum Village hotspots for the delicacy. Both establishments have seen growth since their inception — Yum Village with a second location in West Village and Fork in Nigeria plans to unveil its first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Midtown in the fall.

When he first opened Yum Village in 2019, owner Godwin Ihentuge, who also credits Senegalese singer Akon as an earlier influence in bringing African culture to the forefront, said he developed ways to define the menu at the Afro-Caribbean fusion restaurant in Detroit’s Milwaukee Junction neighborhood for those unfamiliar with the cuisine.
“When we first opened, we had a comic book that explained what fufu was,” Ihentuge said. “So when the fufu challenge started becoming a thing, we had the materials in place to explain Afro-Caribbean food.”
Ihentuge, who catered the dishes served at the Burna Boy afterparty at Delmar, said there’s a current focus on distinguishing the breadth of Afro-Caribbean cuisine.

“Now, Fork in Nigeria is doing its thing, we’ve got Baobab Fare, Little Liberia and all of these different restaurants representing different countries on the continent,” he says. “It becomes really important to take into account that there are different dialects and totally different things that we don’t get a chance to talk about that much.”
Ihentuge and Asante are working closely to activate Yum Village’s West Village beer garden space with a Jerk x Jollof collaboration in the fall.

A Jerk x Jollof partnership offers an opportunity to tap into a clientele that participating restaurants may not have reached otherwise. For the Detroit-based Jamaican catering company Porty Vibez, providing Caribbean sides for the event series’ busiest weekend to date introduced owner Khashana McKenzie to a younger demographic.
“It’s different when [Asante] throws his Afrobeat parties because everyone dances,” McKenzie said. “It’s a no-judgment zone at an Afro-Caribbean party versus when you’re in the club and it’s about getting in free and seeing who can pop the most bottles. Here, all that’s out the door. It’s come through, sweat, dance eat. It’s definitely a younger crowd at the parties, but that’s like about them. That’s who I do want to see more of in the restaurant.”
She said Asante’s encouragement for business owners to include their branding wherever possible has garnered her a boost in social media followers after each event.
Beyond the benefit of building relationships with future customers, Jerk x Jollof also provides an opportunity for participating eateries to connect with each other. Fork in Nigeria owner Prej Iroegbu says the events series and the overall prominence of Afrobeat music have offered an opportunity for African and Caribbean people to recognize the commonalities in their cultures and coexist in a special way.

“Jerk being from the Caribbean and jollof being from Africa is basically telling people that we are going to infuse both cultures and we are going to bring them together,” said Iroegbu, who will cater the finale event of Jerk x Jollof’s summer series. “If you don’t eat jerk chicken, you may eat jollof rice and in doing that, Asante speaks to both people and forces them on the same stage, and I don’t think anybody else has done that.”

 

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Founder of the feast​

Asante’s eyes light up when he describes the sensory experience of a Jerk x Jollof event.
“You’re seeing a super diverse crowd,” he said, “but it’s definitely rooted in beautiful, Black people…African-American, Caribbean, African, but also just overall lovers of the culture. You’re seeing people who dress really well for parties…people make it a point. And you’re hearing a well-curated mix of Afro beats, Soca, dancehall. And we mix in hip-hop and R&B moments to elevate the energy. You’re probably smelling food as well, so you’re either going to go to the dance floor or you’re going to the line.”
But there’s an element of familiarity, I added.

“You come in, you feel like you’re not stepping into the unknown,” he said. “It’s like a warm blanket that is inviting. And I think that’s what has aided us in maintaining not only a core fan base, but also continually attracting people that are coming for the first time.”
Asante and his partners are currently in the first phase of their business plan, creating awareness through traveling, pop-up events. This fall, Jerk x Jollof will travel to New York for the first time during Fashion Week, do a weekend in Atlanta and embark on its first tour of Europe; so far, London, Amsterdam and Paris are in their sights. The month of December will take them to Miami’s iconic Art Basel and then again to Ghana’s Afrochella Festival.
The second phase of the partnership’s plan is the launch of their own annual, two-day Jerk x Jollof festival that will run in both the US and Europe. Phase three envisions brick-and-mortar establishments with both nightclub and dining space, serving up in-house recipes; sneak peeks at those dishes will soon be previewed at their local events.
When it comes to hometown events, Detroit’s next Jerk x Jollof is Saturday, Aug. 6 at the Monroe Street Midway, from 4 pm to 10 pm, with an afterparty at Marble Bar from 10 pm to 3 am Future events are planned for Labor Day weekend, Halloween weekend, and Thanksgiving weekend.

A consummate host, Asante can often be found right at the door of events warmly greeting guests, especially during the first hour. He comes by his party placemaking skills honestly; when he was growing up, his father was one of the main DJs for Ghanian events in southeast Detroit.
“I think about my dad being that DJ person for the local Ghanian events whenever people would have outdoor things or baby showers,” he said, “and how that has low-key manifested into this. The culture became ‘cool,’ and (my) brain starts thinking, ‘How are we going to get it going?’ I can never get enough of the people that are coming for the first time, and coming because they want to experience or just get that much closer to African and Caribbean culture.
“It really fuels me from a spiritual standpoint, to know that I’m aiding in people getting something repeatedly out of attending the events. It makes it feel like you’re on finding your life’s purpose with what you’re doing.
“It makes me feel culturally seen.