get these nets
Veteran
*previous Holiday J x J event in Detroit
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.”
”
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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