Results tagged “Hip hop” from Intelligent Travel Blog

The second annual Capital Hip Hop Soul Festival is set for this Saturday, July 25th, in Marvin Gaye Park in Northeast DC. The free festival and community celebration features a full line up of local talent (16 acts) on two stages, over 20 vendors from community businesses and DC nonprofits, along with a booksigning and poetry slam. The family-friendly festival starts at 11 a.m. and the park is located between two Metro stops: Minnesota Avenue (orange line) and Capitol Heights (blue line). Check out the website where music from the festival is streamed.

To learn more about the festival, we caught up with Maceo Thomas, the festival's organizer.

How'd the festival get started last year?

I was introduced to the music of Kokayi and Afi Soul, two local artists--Kokayi lives in my neighborhood--that I never had heard of. Their music was fantastic. I realized I was clueless on the level of talent that exists here in DC around hip hop and soul music. I had to believe that there were more people like me who couldn't hang out on U St. until the wee hours of the morning to hear these folks. I woke up one morning and decided to put as many local talented hip hop soul artists together one day to introduce them to other folks like me who may have been equally clueless. And I say that totally with love.

Every trip should have a soundtrack, so we've asked CJ Fahey with Nat Geo Music to select artists from their catalog whose songs will inspire you to get going.

 

Last week a friend took me to a party at the stunning Swedish Embassy in Washington, DC, so I've been feeling in a Swedish mood ever since. And considering its small population, Sweden has made a disproportionate contribution to global music. Most famous are guilty-pleasure groups like ABBA and Ace Of Base, but recently it seems that every other indie rock sensation comes from Sweden. And then there's Stockholm-based producer Max Martin who is responsible for massive hits by Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, and the Backstreet Boys. I took a course on Scandinavian literature in college and the professor suggested that Sweden owes its laudable artistic output to precisely the thing that would inspire me to do nothing: their long, dark winters.

One thing that all famous Swedish music groups have in common is that they sing in impeccable English. It makes sense for two reasons: it opens their music to a wider market and much of the music that inspires these rock and pop groups is sung in English. But the lack of internationally successful native language singers from Sweden is one of the things that makes me love so much the Swedish hip-hop group Snook.