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Vents: We’re happy to be speaking today with two of the fine folks – Anthony Smith (Executive Director of the Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District) and Kim J. Ford (Festival Director and owner of BRND Marketing Group LLC) -behind one of the most innovative and feel-good annual music concerts you’re ever likely to find, the celebrated Lincoln Park music Festival! Welcome to our humble pages, gang! For those woefully out of the loop, can you talk about what separates the Lincoln Park Music Festival from other similar events?
Kim J. Ford: Lincoln Park Music Festival is New Jersey’s “best kept secret”. How else would one describe 40,000-50,000 attendees over multiple dates only 20 miles from New York City – and people are just finding out about it after 15 years (minus the two COVID pandemic years)? The festival reaches just as many people as the big summertime radio station concert at New Jersey’s Met Life Stadium every year although it has not attained the same level of sponsorship support. What makes Lincoln Park Music Festival special is that is it truly homegrown and BIPOC founded and led. It was not created by a large corporation.
Anthony Smith: Born just 3 years after the founding of its parent non-profit organization – Lincoln Park Cultural District (also BIPOC founded and led since inception) – the Lincoln Park Music Festival began as a community engagement tool to re-brand the historic Lincoln Park community in downtown, Newark, NJ as the non-profit worked to build housing and bring families back post-60s uprising, 80s-90s drug epidemic in urban America and the national crisis of 9/11 and market crash of 2008-09. Lincoln Park Music Festival is truly the ”people’s festival” and has provided hundreds of local talent the opportunity to perform alongside regional, nationally and internally known artists such as The Clark Sisters, Big Daddy Kane, Rah Digga, DJ Joe Claussell (House), the iconic B-Boy collective Rock Steady Crew, DJ Danny Krivit (House), Fat Joe, KRS One, the late James Moody (Jazz legend), Cissy Houston, Donald Malloy (Gospel), Redman, EPMD, Method Man and many many more! Most recently Grammy nominated R&B singer/songwriter Valerie Simpson popped up as a surprise guest of Provenance Music Group on Gospel night. The festival has grown from 2,500 attendees in year one to over 40,000 across multiple dates which peaks the last weekend in July to August. In Newark, it is the largest English dominant music festival that includes Gospel, House Music, Hip Hop Culture, Jazz, and more.
Finally, our retooled Sustainable Living Community Village not only includes wellness, but workforce where attendees had speed meet up interviews with employers actively hiring like Fedex, US Army, PSEG, Port Authority of NY/NJ, Farmland Fresh and more. Our Environmental partners such as the Greater Newark Conservancy, Urban Agriculture Cooperative and our own Lincoln Park Community Garden offered attendees fresh fruits and vegetables for sale.
Vents: This years’ Festival has already wrapped up the first-half of its events with a bevy of some of the very best in Gospel, Hip-Hop and other genres. How did the first part of this year’s Festival stack up against prior ones in your opinion?
ANTHONY: In 2020, we planned for our 15th Anniversary festival but due to COVID, had to pivot to virtual experience in October 2020. Thankfully, our sponsors such as The City of Newark’s Creative Catalyst Fund, Verizon, TD Bank, Provident Bank, Valley Bank and host of others thought it not robbery to support the non-profits efforts to mount a virtual festival, which provided upliftment and relief. In 2021, we did not know what to expect but through arts relief programs such as the New Jersey Arts & Culture Relief Fund, Lincoln Park Cultural District was able to mount a “pop up” experience in September 2021, which again was still off season for us. Finally, this year we were able to return to our Summer calendar and thankfully, the fans came back!
KIM: Pre-pandemic, the festival was held on a 3-day weekend Friday to Sunday. In the past we’ve garnered about 5,000-6,000 attendees by Friday night for Gospel; 20,000-25,000 on House Music Saturday over a 10-hour period and about 10,000-18,000 on Sunday, which is Hip Hop Day. This year, we started on a Wednesday night and hit about 2,500 rolling attendees in the park over 4 hours after work which was huge for us, especially midweek. On Thursday and Friday, July 27-28, we hosted two local community engagement nights – Soul Line Dancing and a tribute to renowned artist and activist Rodney M. Gilbert – and the community really showed out! Each night, about 300-500 residents sat out in picnic chairs, patronized our food truck vendors, danced and had a blast! For most, just being communal outside with, socializing, was the normalcy the community needed. But, House Music Day is a different vibe.
ANTHONY: Oh yes – our House Music lineage in Newark can be traced back to the old clubs such as Paradisio, Sparky’s, Le Joc’s, Key Club and of course Zanzibar! Zanzibar was globally renowned as the counterpart to NYC’s Paradise Garage. The sound system was amazing and it was where all the top DJs played. Zanibar was owned by Miles Berger, who now owns the Robert Treat Hotel and converted the old Carlton Hotel into the Tryp by Wyndham. When Zanzibar closed in the 90s, House Music migrated to outdoor festivals like Lincoln Park Music Festival. I’d say our direct connection was when Zanzibar’s original host Shelton Hayes was involved in our early festival days. Since then, House Music Day at the Lincoln Park Music Festival is like reunion for the original House Heads from the heyday of Newark’s nightlife. You’ll see three generations of House Heads in the same family arrive at 7am to camp out in their spot. Some of the Zanizabar giants that have played our stage include Hippie Torales, Tony Humphries, Barbara Tucker, and CeCe Rogers to name a few. Lincoln Park Music Festival’s House Music Day is the modern blueprint for outdoor House Music dance events and that’s why we garner north 20,000 attendees each year on that day alone. It’s iconic.
KIM: Hip Hop Day is equally as iconic in that the legendary Rock Steady Crew were part of launching it in the early years as their annual RSC reunion before Redman and DoItAll from Lords of the Underground – now Councilman Dupre’ Kelly, started programming the day, providing more opportunities for local Jersey Hip Hop artists. I started co-programming the day with DoItAll for about 5 years until the two COVID years and then his election to city council. This year, nearly 10,000 of our crowds returned as Redman performed hits from his 30th Anniversary debut Whut? Thee Album and other classics over this storied career. The best part – his salute to childhood friend and surprise performer on the festival stage Councilman Dupre’ Kelly aka DoItAll – who was celebrated for his historic win – the first Hip Hop artist elected to office in the United States. What we love most is that our stage is where one might discover Unicorn aka Kherk Cobain (progenitor of this generation’s Jersey Club Hip Hop movement); the first openly bi-Hip Hop performer to grace our stage Prince Derek Doll who’s about to break out; and the ‘mad scientist’ Samad Savage who produces, writes, performs, shoot his own videos and edits to boot. On our stage, you’ll have a native Newarker Trece7ev, whose Stop Playin’ With Me, is a viral hit on radio and internet since his co-sign by Funkmaster Flex alongside newcomers like Gospel inflected Emcee Nakeo and the poetic verses of Kween Moore and the Femme Curator Arts collective. It’s where a young upstart named Joyner Lucas performed during the 2014 AllHipHop.com Breeding Ground segment and then go on to become…well…JOYNER LUCAS!
Vents: How has the crowd turnout been in regards to the July 27-31 leg of the Festival?
ANTHONY: As festival producers, we did not know what to expect coming off the heels of the past two years. We’ve worked during the winter with Partners in Health on a COVID awareness and vaccination hesitancy program we called “HUMANS, Be Kind”. It was our hope to add to the city’s efforts to get the numbers of vaccinated persons up ahead of this year’s festival. We found that our messaging, adding to the collective education, really helped people feel safer about gathering in large number and coming outside to our fest. All total, we saw great number of our pre-pandemic audience return.
Vents: Talk with us about what music aficionados can look forward to with the second and last part of the Lincoln Park Music Festival…What sorts of treats are we in for musically?
KIM: We’ve always wanted to program other genres of music, but our traditional structure of Jazz, Gospel, House and Hip Hop – coupled with the city’s sound ordinances – did not allow for more hours during the day to offer additional genres. There was literally no more stage time! Now, with Lincoln Park Caribana, we can program music of the Caribbean and our own “Black Hippie Fest Feels” event called The Soul of Lincoln Park which will be headlined by the global phenomenon Soul In The Horn and the uncategorizable soul-rocker Gail Campbell. She’s like if Mahalia Jackson fronted a rock band, you’d have Gail. The world better get ready.
Vents: How has the worldwide pandemic altered the LPMF? And are those alterations permanent as we move forward?
ANTHONY: We found that food vendors, that used to tent and cook, have gone to a food truck business model. This allows them to be self-contained as they travel from festival to festival to earn their living. The pandemic hit Newark NJ hard as it did other urban cities with high concentrations of historically marginalized populations. This trickled down to small business owners that have brick and mortar. Some survived the pandemic and others did not. Onboarding first-time vendors to the process was challenging but rewarding to provide space for small businesses to sell their wares. Going forward, we will continue to grow the pool of vendors as we have more opportunities with second leg of the festival to reach new customers. During the festival, Mayor Baraka announced his plans to support the revitalization of our park as part of his Newark 260 Master Plan.
KIM: We hope this will include extending free public WiFi down to Lincoln Park. This not only helps the surround community, but during the festival, it will allow us to implement tech-forward solutions for attendee wristbanding, payments to vendors, and driving messaging real time geo-targeting about who’s on stage when, sponsor engagement and all the cool stuff techy we’ve wanted to do.
Vents: What does the LPMF mean to not only the state of New Jersey, but to the music lovers worldwide?
ANTHONY: The State of NJ’s Department of Community Affairs, under Lt. Governor Sheila Oliver – a native Newarker – supports Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District’s community building efforts and recognizes that our Lincoln Park Music Festival is key to creating the live-work-play arts district envisioned by LPCCD’s founders 20 years ago. Because what’s an arts district without the arts? More evident than ever in 2020, when under lockdown, we were found out small the world really is…online…the interconnectivity of the arts. In our first-ever virtual festival, we were able to include artists from the Caribbean, Africa, London and Brazil. Now, that we are back together again outside in real life, Lincoln Park Caribana keeps that promise. It’s only up from here.
Vents: How difficult is it to line up such amazing talent as Le’Andria Johnson, Anthony Ponder & Ministry’s Desire and the Provenance Music Group?
KIM: The one thing that Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District – and its signature festival – has earned is brand capital. Born up from the people, by the people, for the people from the mission driven non-profit, these artists connect with the work LPCCD is doing to uplift the community. They get it and understanding that by keeping opening week of the festival free, Lincoln Park Music Festival reaches music fans where they are – socially, geographically and financially. It’s the great equalizer. Through our Sustainable Living Community Village, we can “minister” to folks and do the healing work addressing the social determinants of health – wellness, workforce, housing and environment.
Vents: The LPMF has introduced something which is new for a lot of us – the Newark Symphony Hall’s Step 4 Step Soul Line Dancing. This sounds absolutely delightful and I demand to know why I’m only now hearing about this brilliant underground phenomenon!
KIM: More people should know about it! Did you know there were over 60 documented Soul Line Dancing routines? I didn’t! The popularity of modern soul line dancing can be traced to a Broadway dancer named Ric Silver who devised a dance set to Jamaican reggae artist Bunny Wailer’s “Electric Boogie”. Most of us know “The Wobble”, “The Cha Cha Slide”, “The Cupid Shuffle” and the iconic “Electric Slide” (performed at the end of the 1999 film The Best Man to Cameo’s “Candy”). In Newark, NJ, Step 4 Step Soul Line Dancing takes place the 2nd Friday of every month in Newark Symphony Hall’s Terrace Ballroom and is hosted by Andrea “Lil Bit” Mason, Jillian “Lady J” Barrick and Douglas “X-Man” Hawkins with tunes by DJ Chris Blues (We Dancing Over Here). In honor of Lincoln Park’s 15th Anniversary, the collective opted to bring the sensation to the festival house music day dance floor.
ANTHONY: There was a beautiful sea of team T-shirts and the way they learned quick-fire dance routines, I was almost tempted to join in! I’ll definitely be stopping by Newark Symphony Hall’s Terrace Ballroom to “slide from side to side”!
Vents: How critical to New Jersey’s economy and to its artistic landscape is the LPMF?
ANTHONY: The last survey we conducted with Rutgers University Newark showed that festival attendees spend an average of $25-$30 dollars per day. Do the math. That’s thousands of customers patronizing nearly 70 small business vendors in our Artisan Way (apparel and wares) and Taste of the Festival (food). The festival footprint is not limited to the park, people sit in front of local eateries around the park such as Soul Food Chess House and buy food while playing chess on the street. The senior building across the street bring their chairs out and listen right in front of their building. People in The Packard Lofts on West Kinney host rooftop cocktail soirees while dancing to our music. You can literally listen in within a 6-block radius. Also, with the added security and traffic control from Newark Police Department, the 3-4 blocks around the park becomes a pedestrian walk, allowing people to find a spot away from the main stage around the perimeters blocks and cool out. They are all festival attendees! The work Lincoln Park Coast Cultural has done, and is doing over the next two years, will continue to change the trajectory of the entire catchment area into the walkable arts district we envision.
Vents: Is it too early to ask if plans are already being made for next year’s Festival?
KIM: We are always planning, and now with the two weekends, we have a frame work from which we shall begin fleshing out 2023 before this year ends. Weather forecasts aside (which caused us to reschedule some weekend two dates this year), we are working to actualize a 10-day experience over two weekends which will undergird the tourism industry in downtown Newark.
ANTHONY: In June 2022, Mayor Baraka just announced the creation of a new “Arts and Education District” from Harriet Tubman Square (formerly Washington Park) to Lincoln Park and our non-profit Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District and its signature Lincoln Park Music Festival, play a major role in the southern end of the Broad Street corridor. This includes zoning laws that support a nightlife scene, residential, retail, arts spaces and the beautification of Lincoln Park. Along with our neighbors Newark Symphony Hall, Newark School of the Arts and alliance with Newark Arts (the arts council), this new district will not only shape the community but our festival as well. There are plans to upgrade the park’s electrical grid and think about some permanent staging that will allow year round programming.
Vents: Any final thoughts on the LPMF and its importance to New Jersey?
ANTHONY: As a native Newarker, and someone who frequented iconic Newark nightclubs of yesteryear – including Zanzibar – I could not be more proud of how renown our festival has become! It is one of the major “must play” stages for Gospel, House Music and Hip Hop in the region. Now, we’ve got Caribbean music & culture and providing space for Black culture that cannot be boxed in or defined. Who knows – maybe someone in the vein of a Grace Jones, Lenny Kravitz, FKA Twigs or Fishbone will be born on The Soul of Lincoln Park stage? The fact is, if you can make it at Lincoln Park Music Festival, you can make it anywhere – that’s why we are called the “Brick City”!
