AFROFEST

Afrofest began in 1989 as a private venture of Highlife World, a company specializing in the Highlife Music of Ghana. In 1990 Thaddy Ulzen and Sam Mensah formed Music Africa as a Non-profit community organization to elevate the festival to be a truly community event and a showcase of the diverse African communities and culture in the city of Toronto. In its first year Afrofest took place at the Bamboo Club before branching out into Queen's Park in 1990 and, later to many other clubs and public venues.

Afrofest has grown each year with the Queen's park event, Afrofest in the park, having become the largest annual African music event in Canada. In 2000 Afrofest in the Park was expanded to a two day event. To measure the festival's growth in participation; in 1990 about 2,000 people came out to see the great South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela. Since the festival was expanded to the current multi-day format up to 80,000 people have enjoyed the festival each year. Many friendships have been formed and maintained (including a few weddings!) as well as business links forged among vendors in the busy African Marketplace.The many concessions selling African foods, crafts, clothing etc. have become just important to the festival as the featured acts themselves, creating an atmosphere where people of all ages and backgrounds can mix and enjoy the festival together. In recent years, more elements have been added as the festival has grown. First a "childrens village" display area was added, then a drum stage, a workshop area and for this year the "under the Baobab Tree" performance area as well.

Music Africa has played an increasingly important role supporting other African community organizations. Logistical support has been provided in terms of event production, publicity and promotion, marketing and volunteer recruitment, supplying information on potential funding sources and in a number of other ways. African music has grown locally by leaps and bounds since the early days of the festival with only a relatively small number of groups playing African music in the city at the time. Today, even with the festival expanded over several days, and onto three stages at Queen's Park. Afrofest can offer only a small sampling of the wealth of talent that is now avaliable. The success of African music groups in Toronto has been noticed in Africa as well, with several artists receiving considerable attention based on their success abroad. Indeed, Toronto is now internationally recognised as a hotbed of African music. These things provide the best testament to what Music Africa has done to promote African music in toronto. and how successfull the organization has been in carrying forward its mandate. On a recent visit to Toronto, Afrosest co-founder Thaddy Ulzen upon witnessing a very busy Music Africa event at a local club, commented that "this is what we dreamed about 18 years ago"...you see, dreams can come true!