ICON: Grace Jones

Organisers behind the first AFROPUNK London festival felt the WRATH of Britain’s black community earlier this year, after they foolishly announced that M.I.A was going to headline the highly anticipated event.

Personally, I have never been an M.I.A fan. Her “music” does nothing for me and I have always viewed her as being somewhat of a fraud.

Many took offence to the Sri-Lankan singer headlining the festival because of her controversial remarks regarding the Black Lives Matter movement (Click Here to read all about it), and the fact that AFROPUNK was created to celebrate black punk culture, so why would you choose an artist who isn’t of African descent (sure as hell does not identify as black), and doesn’t represent the culture to headline this particular festival??? 

At first AFROPUNK refused to take our voices seriously (a typical response here in the UK) and released the following statement in June:

As you can all imagine this statement did not go down too well and once again AFROPUNK experienced the WRATH of black voices via social media. 

Then several days ago organisers announced that M.I.A had now been dropped as the headline act. I suspect the backlash from the community and low ticket sells was the driving force behind this decision.

Today it was announced that the ICON Grace Jones will headline the festival.

CLICK HERE to view the full lineup. 

Bask in the POWER of the social media folks and a special shout out to Strolling series creator Cecile Emeke, who SCHOOLED the hidden faces behind AFROPUNK London in a series of tweets.

I hope a valuable lesson was learned here AFROPUNK!