PODCAST:

The Chihamba African American Cultural Arts Festival, celebrating its 35th anniversary on July 25 at Washington Park, aims to uplift West African cultural heritage through dance, storytelling, and music.

TRANSCRIPT:

Rosemary Cavalier:
You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville for Arts This Week, we chatted with Ayanna Mitchell and Lillie Williams from the Chihamba African American Cultural Arts Festival. They chatted with us about the 35th annual celebration coming to Washington Park on Saturday, July 25. What makes Chihamba and this whole festival so important, Ayanna Mitchell?

Ayanna Mitchell:
The organization’s mission is to provide opportunities for learning and uplifting West African cultural heritage, and bringing that to the Charlottesville Albemarle area. I would say through dance, storytelling, and music and drumming. That is our mission.

Lillie Williams:
If you want to experience a good part of the African culture, it’s in a village setting. Families sometimes come if they can have–over the years, families have come and and settled their family reunions around it. It’s a time for people who don’t get to see each other for you know–for a long time because they’re gonna know about this festival. They like oh, well, it’s happening. We gonna meet you there.

Rosemary Cavalier:
And how does the Chihamba festival serve that mission?

Ayanna Mitchell:
We also have performers who share, and it kind of expands the diaspora of what is African American culture, what is West African culture, and what is, what makes up the culture of our community as Black culture as a whole.

Lillie Williams:
Being able to shop with the vendors and they, it’s not stores like that in Charlottesville. If they want an African attire, there’s a vendor there with it. If they want a pocket book with an African flair to it, it’s there. They’re gonna be able to buy things that are not in stores around the area.

Ayanna Mitchell:
This year specifically, we will be doing a Marie Whitten Memorial Walk. Marie Whitten was our–a member of the community for a very long time.

Lillie Williams:
Donna Graham is the founder, and she said, Donna said, what she wanted to do, and Marie said, “Well, if you get it started, I’ll help you.” So I want to say she was there from from day one. Basically, the festival is pretty much dedicated to her, and we miss her. We miss her an awful lot, and we just want to know and celebrate who she was.

Rosemary Cavalier:
Could you walk us through your day of schedule?

Ayanna Mitchell:
So the memory walk starts at 10 o’clock at Burley. Leaves from Burley, and we’re going to walk to Washington Park. At that point, we’ll start with our opening processional and drum call. From there, we have the Kumba Corner that will be open for the kids. We also have pool passes for families to go to the pool that’s adjacent to it, that they can participate in that as well. We have a food festival, so we have many food vendors of different types that’ll be there, sharing foods of across the African and the African American diaspora. As mentioned, we have a live DJ who will be there and performers throughout the day, as well as we will be honoring our first Marie Whitten Heritage Scholarship recipients, and we offer every year a Keeper of the Village Award to someone who has been upholding our community and doing work within our community for a long-standing period of time.

Lillie Williams:
We have gospel. We have R&B. We’re gonna have some rap. We try to get all all of the people in. We got the elite dancers. We want to draw in not just a certain group, but everyone. We want to get the young people in. We want to get the middle aged people in. We want to get the elders in. We want to have something for everybody.

Ayanna Mitchell:
As much as this is about African culture and African American culture, this is really an opportunity for everybody in our community to come together. Something I really love about our festival is that everyone, no matter what your religious, cultural, racial, national background is, you find your place and your space, and you find family and community when you come to the festival.

Rosemary Cavalier:
The Chihamba Cultural Arts Festival is Saturday, July 25 at Washington Park from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. You can find more information at chihambaofdancescape.org. Arts This Week is supported by the UVA Art Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance, music, theater, and visual arts programming. Learn more at PVCC.edu. For WTJU, I’m Rosemary Cavalier.