Last summer, President Joe Biden declared Juneteenth a federal holiday, making it the first holiday to be approved since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1983. In honor of this year’s Juneteenth, a relatively under-celebrated and under-appreciated holiday, TONE is hosting a weekend celebration, complete with a Saturday night gala and a Sunday festival.
This will be the first time TONE will host these events in conjunction with each other. Kai Ross, a visual artist and marketing manager at TONE, explains that the first (and only, so far) gala was held in 2019. “A gala was always supposed to be the plan,” they say, but due to Covid, TONE wasn’t ready to bring it back until now.
This year’s gala at Beale Street Landing is Afrofuturism-themed, with a request for attendees to wear Afrofuturistic attire. “Come dressed in your best black-tie but put it in like 2060,” Ross says. “One thing about Juneteenth is acknowledging the past to look forward. So we kind of went with a sankofa concept.”
The gala will feature a keynote speech by artist and TONE board member Derek Fordjour, in addition to a reading by Afrofuturist author Sheree Renée Thomas. Chef Eli Townsend of Sage will cater, and an after-party on the Mississippi Queen Riverboat III will follow. Tickets have been sold out, but if you couldn’t get your hands on a gala or after-party ticket, worry not: The second annual Juneteenth Family Reunion Festival is free and open to the public.
In lieu of a gala in 2021, TONE threw its first festival on the 10 acres surrounding the Orange Mound Tower, the site of the community-focused development project led by TONE founder Victoria Jones and Unapologetic founder James Dukes, aka IMAKEMADBEATS. “We knew we had to do something outside and that was Covid-safe,” Ross says. “We started to think about the fact that a lot of us — even just staff — hadn’t seen each other in so long. We hadn’t seen each other in over a year. And we were like, ‘This is about to be a family reunion.’”
And the family-reunion theme stuck. “It was a very beautiful experience,” they say. “It’s very important to do this celebration in the first Black neighborhood in this country. Just to do it on those grounds is always a special moment when we think about it.”
This year’s festival will include food trucks, vendors, games, and live music. The packed set list, headlined by rapper and Memphis native Duke Deuce, includes the Memphis Youth Arts Initiative Drumline, Mante Carlo, Bodywerk, Talibah Safiya, Texas Warehouse, Hitkidd, and Lukah. For more information, visit tonememphis.org and keep up with TONE’s socials, @tonememphis901 on Facebook and @tonememphis on Instagram.
Juneteenth Family Reunion Festival, Orange Mound Tower, Sunday, June 19th, 5 p.m.-11 p.m., Free.
