festival

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The 19th annual African Festival of the Arts runs Friday through Monday in Washington Park at 51st and Cottage Grove. Presented by the Africa International House, it features music on three stages in a range of genres, among them jazz, blues, hip-hop, neosoul, gospel, and traditional African. (At press time the DJs on each stage had not been confirmed.) More than 300 vendors and artists fill the festival’s huge marketplace, and food and drink offerings include many cuisines of the African diaspora (jerk chicken, Senegalese wolof rice, Nigerian egusi) and a selection of South African wines.

Other highlights include a children’s pavilion, a quilting pavilion, an author and book pavilion, and a pavilion supplementing the Hip-Hop Stage that pays homage to the African roots of hip-hop culture and its current global reach.

3:30 Spirit Dance Troupe

4:30 Spirit Dance Troupe

saturday30

6:30 Ray Martinez