No hip-hop at Asheville’s Goombay festival, either; where’s the outrage?

There wasn’t any hip-hop at the Goombay Festival.

Where’s the outrage? It’s not a facetious question, especially following all the coverage the lack of hip-hop at Bele Chere received earlier this year.

Asheville blogger Tim Smith aka SocialLifeAVL earlier this year called attention to the lack of hip-hop acts at the city’s premier summer festival, Bele Chere, by complaining via social media and guest writing a piece for Mountain Xpress. Smith’s point, in a nutshell: 

It’s mind boggling to me that the No. one-selling genre of music will NOT be represented at the largest street festival in the Southeast. Suburban white kids are among the top consumers of hip-hop. So why is there NO representation of it?

Is it racism, fear, the old Asheville mentality or do they just not want to scare the white people? In my opinion, it’s all of the above. I can no longer sugarcoat this issue and stand to see a whole community and genre ignored in Asheville.

Smith, who was a member of Bele Chere’s volunteer committee charged with deciding which musical acts play Bele Chere, as well as a promoter of hip-hop music acts, said his concerns were never heard. (It actually turned out that there was little hip-hop at Bele Chere due to a last-minute change, but not really the type of act Smith was talking about.) It was an excellent example of a community member/blogger raising an issue lots of other folks were apparently afraid to talk about.

Smith’s complaints triggerd a WLOS television news story and moved the Xpress‘ David Forbes to dig a little deeper. He asked for, and received, email communication between city staff – the city runs Bele Chere – and the music committee. The emails revealed the city staff’s safety concerns about hip-hop acts, the implication being there was some latent racism behind it all. Xpress ran with a big story about the issue.

Thus, my question – in the wake of that extensive questioning and coverage, where’s the outrage over the lack of hip-hop at Goombay? It, too, is a city-run festival. Shouldn’t it be held to the same level of inquiry?

Goombay has significant input from the YMI Cultural Center, Asheville’s nonprofit devoted to building up Asheville’s African-American community. The festival is held in the historic heart of Asheville’s black community, and it has an Afro-Carribean theme and features black vendors and black musical acts. 

And yet, no hip-hop. Take a look at the Goombay musical line-up, and you won’t see a single rap act. It’s soul, R&B and Gospel. Look back at past Goombay festivals, and you’ll see more of the same.

Why? I think Asheville’s black community – or at least the folks intimately involved with the YMI and in deciding Goombay’s music – has its/their own concerns about what impact a hip-hop star on stage would have on the festival. They, too, see the potential for “safety issues” if a relevant rap artist is present.

I’d dare say, too, that in the end, it’s because nobody really cares. Nobody really cares about the little African-American festival that follows the big Bele Chere. If they did, we’d have seen corresponding follow-up and discussion.

But to borrow words – if Asheville’s “diverse,” why isn’t Goombay?