A Durham jazz festival's second act
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Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah performing in Switzerland in 2024. Photo: Pascal Schmidt / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
Before it went under during the pandemic, the Durham music festival Art of Cool was one of the city's most popular homegrown cultural events, attracting big names from the jazz and hip-hop world.
- Now, Cicely Mitchell, a co-founder of Art of Cool and owner of the jazz bar Missy Lane's, is hoping to recapture the magic from those pre-pandemic days with a new jazz festival called Missy Lane's Block Party.
Why it matters: It's been a tough period for music festivals throughout the country, as organizers had to navigate a pandemic and festival-goers had to, in turn, navigate the effects of inflation on their spending, NPR previously reported.
- But Mitchell, who sold Art of Cool in 2018, believes festivals remain vitally important for creating a sense of place and fostering culture — especially in a place like Durham that lost multiple festivals in recent years.
Driving the news: On Oct. 4, Mitchell's jazz venue Missy Lane's Assembly Room will host Missy Lane's Block Party, a one-day jazz festival in collaboration with the artist Chief Adjuah.
- Adjuah and artists like Bilal, the Revive Big Band, Kiefer and many others will perform across two stages.
- The goal, Mitchell said, is to grow the festival organically, as she believes Art of Cool grew too fast for its own good.
The big picture: Mitchell isn't the only one trying to re-capture the magic of a departed festival the first weekend of October.
- In Raleigh, several city organizations have come together to launch the bluegrass-oriented Raleigh Wide Open festival the same weekend as the block party.
- That festival hopes to continue the roots music tradition left behind by the World of Bluegrass Festival, which departed Raleigh for Tennessee this year.
Between the lines: Mitchell has been one of the leading voices behind live music in Durham, but she said "it's still hard to put on a large-scale event in downtown Durham."
- Earlier this year, she helped organize the Biscuits & Banjos festival with the Grammy award-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens.
What they're saying: "The goals are the same between Art of Cool and the Block Party, which is to expand the audience for jazz," Mitchell told Axios. But then a secondary one is about place-making."
- She hopes that the festival, which will take over the 300 block of East Main Street, will help continue to build momentum toward the east side of downtown Durham.
- "People know they're in downtown," when they cross over South Roxboro Street, "but they don't expect there to be [night] life," she said.