Digable Planets, Kari Faux, Wiki, and Donwill at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! at Lena Horne Bandshell
On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc and his sister, Cindy Campbell, threw a party in the recreation room of their apartment complex at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. The party was a back to school and birthday celebration for Cindy which birthed the hip-hop genre. Five decades later, hip-hop is a cultural phenomenon and many events took place across New York City (and other cities) on August 11, 2023.
At BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival at Prospect Park, two free events celebrating hip-hop were scheduled for this season. The first, taking place on the 50th anniversary date itself on Friday, August 11th featured live performances by Digable Planets (who formed in Brooklyn in 1987), Kari Faux (of Little Rock/Los Angeles) who ended her set with “White Caprice” from her newest album Real Bitches Don’t Die in celebration of her collaborator on the song, Gangsta Boo, Wiki (NYC), and DJ sets by Donwill (of Cincinnati, OH’s Tanya Morgan, who now resides in Brooklyn). Before taking the stage, Butterfly (Ishmael Butler) of Digable Planets thanked hip-hop and sang “Happy Birthday,” before officially starting a song from their catalog. 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of their debut album, Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space), and naturally many songs from that album were performed. The evening was a fun celebration of hip-hop and photos from all four acts can be found in the above gallery.
Digable Planets played the Blue Note Jazz club on August 11, 2021 and images from that show can be found here. They also performed at the Bandshell on July 30, 2016 with Camp Lo, and images from that show are available here.
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!’s continues to celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with a screening of Brown Sugar, a discussion between BRIC president Wes Jackson and New York Times culture reporter Joe Coscarelli, a panel with fashion designer April Walker (Walker Wear), and more on Saturday, August 12th. Photos from that event are now available here.