The Chicago brothers are reuniting
Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa announced that they are launching a new festival in Accra, Ghana – Black Star Line Fest.
Inspired by Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line, the musical jamboree will take place on January 6th and will feature the world’s biggest artists according to Chance. A lineup has yet to be announced.
"We invite you to West Africa. To the Gateway. To Accra, Ghana. January 6th. The Black Star Line Festival. We see the biggest artists in the world coming down for a shared experience. We see 38,000 people. A sea of black folks standing out there on Black Star Square on January 6th. So everything we are doing is with a goal of uniting and building a bridge between Black people of the diaspora and the globe with the continent and Ghana is the gateway to all of that. We have a vision of a connected global network of black people from Ghana from Nigeria from Burkina Faso down to South Africa to Brazil to the Islands to the U.S to the U.K. to the black people that are everywhere." - Chance the Rapper via Instagram
The Black Star Line (BSL) traces its roots back to a steamship corporation founded by Marcus Garvey. The BSL steamship played a significant part in Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement, whose mission was having black pride and economic self-sufficiency. In 1957, the Ghanaian government included the Black Star in the redesign of the country flag.
Considering the rich history of the symbolism of the Black Star, one would guess this is why the Chicago duo want to continue that mission of uniting the diaspora through music. Last year, the pair took Chicago youth to a trip to Ghana to learn more about their ancestry.
Chance visited Accra for the first time in January and “fell in love” according to his twitter post. Hence the “Coloring Book” rapper returning there to take Chicago youth and to host a festival comes as no surprise.
Chance also has a new project out now, The Highs & The Lows, featuring Joey Bada$$.