Juneteenth music festival in KC features hip-hop, R&B, pop and more. Here’s the lineup

This month, Kansas City has seen many events celebrating the Juneteenth holiday throughout the metro.

This Saturday will mark the 12th annual Juneteenth Heritage Festival. That evening, the city will see the first One Night Only Music Festival, showcasing an all-Black lineup of local artists.

The event is organized by The Kansas City Defender, an online publication founded in 2021 as a news outlet to serve the Black community. It will start at 6 p.m. at The Truman, 601 E. Truman Road. Those involved hope this show will be the first year of an annual music festival featuring local Black artists, across genres.

“We wanted to really show the diversity of Black artistic talent in Kansas City,” said Ryan Sorrell, founder of The Defender. “We want it to be the largest showcase of local Black hip-hop, R&B and pop musicians in the city’s history and especially wanted to do this on Juneteenth.”

The Juneteenth weekend was selected for the show because of the holiday’s deep historical significance to the Black community.

The holiday, officially celebrated June 19, started in 1865 to celebrate the final release of enslaved peoples in Galveston, Texas, and has become a cultural high point for many Black people across the country.

Since The Defender’s launch, Sorrell, 27, and his team have hosted community events such as outreach programs and open mics. This festival will be their most ambitious undertaking to date. Sorrell and his team expect a sell-out crowd of over a thousand attendees.

The lineup at One Night Only

The lineup of acts at One Night Only will include up-and-coming local artists working to elevate the KC music scene, such as DWalk, BlackStarKids, Jo Blaq, Jass Couch and Royal Chief.

Teaming with local promoters MarksMyBarber and Rio Entertainment, The Defender is targeting many corners of the Kansas City music scene to have one of the most diverse lineups of Black music in the city. Acts hitting the stage on Saturday will cover a wide spectrum of Black music, from neo-soul to jazz, funk and pop.

Sorrell wants to show that music in the Black community goes deeper than hip-hop and R&B.

“We wanted to really show the diversity of Black artistic talent in Kansas City, that’s why we have headliners like BlackStarKids who are a genre bending group outside the realms of what people traditionally think of when they think of Black music,” he said.

While this is a social event created to bring the community together via music, it also has the purpose of raising funds for local nonprofit organizations. Part of the proceeds will be donated to Decarcerate KC, which works to combat inequities in the prison-industrial complex and Liberation Lit, which provides books to inmates.

Royal Chief to perform at Juneteenth event

Jamel Thompson, who performs under the name Royal Chief, is excited about the possibility of an annual festival.

After living in Atlanta for several years to pursue his music career, Thompson returned to Kansas City hoping to use what he learned to uplift the music scene here. Having had opportunities to perform at events such as the annual AC3 Festival in Atlanta, Thompson feels Kansas City is long overdue for a yearly summer festival.

“This is the first time someone is pulling people together, making it happen and hopefully we can grow from here,” Thompson said. “Most people just didn’t know how to do it and I have heard people talk about the idea a million times, but nobody has stepped up and put it together.”

Thompson sees this as an opportunity for local acts to unite and introduce their music to each other’s fan bases.

He knows that the event’s success lives and dies with the support of the people. He wants local music lovers to also see this festival as an opportunity to grow something uniquely Kansas City.

And he expects this show to set the tone for showcasing Black talents for years to come.

“I am happy to see it for Kansas City, it is good for the artists here to get that platform and blend their different crowds together. All of us pulling together and making something bigger than us,” he said.

“This thing can definitely grow to where we can bring in bigger artists like a Tech N9ne or a Janelle Monae. But with the people’s support it has the potential to get to the point where these big-name national acts want to come perform at our festival.”