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I enjoyed the network I missed on my first visit to the prominent New Orleans meeting.
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By Patrice Peck
The first five notes of “Swag Surfin” were played at the cavernous Ernest N Convention Center. Morial in New Orleans, a call to a swarm of other people on a makeshift dance floor. Do what you do naturally when F. L. Y. (Fast Life Yungstaz) The success of 2009 is approaching, I stuck rainy arms with a stranger on either side of me, and them with those who were by his side. Tilt our beautiful black bodies back and forth and mount the booming bass as one.
I’ve “swag surfed” at graduations and birthday parties, barbecues, and wedding receptions, but this specific moment was my first time in a crowd like this since March 2020. It was also my first time at the iconic Essence Festival, the world festival. The largest musical and cultural collection organized by and for black women, attracting more than 500,000 attendees to New Orleans each July 4th weekend, according to organizers.
What began as an exclusive concert for Essence magazine’s 25th anniversary in 1995 has since grown into a big show that includes musical “superrooms,” after-hours comedy shows, and discussion centers highlighting beauty, food and wine, technology, health, film, finances, professional training, spirituality, activism and more. It was also the setting for the 2017 comedy “Girls Trip,” starring Tiffany Haddish, Regina Hall, Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith.
On the dance floor, a woman he had just met, named Zada Jones Collins of Killeen, Texas, exclaimed, “It gives me life!”Collins, a 48-year-old New Orleans resident known as MiLady, was at the festival so many times that she has lost count. “It helps me not cry,” said Collins, who had buried his father last weekend. But as soon as he said it, he led me back into the crowd saying, “I feel like we have to stop by to dance!”
After a verbal exchange like that, the theme of the 2022 festival, “It’s black joy for me!” was felt even more in the nose. But, like many clichés, it’s true.
If anyone who was not black had spent 4 days at the Essence Festival, they would probably have an idea that we were doing well, that we had assumed the effects of the pandemic with the superhuman force that is intended with us.
“We have to be so strong, we don’t have time to be weak,” said Breana Jupiter, 32. “Everyone looks at us as if we are less than if we are not as strong as they understand us. ” Jupiter, a specialist at a local youth hospital, felt she couldn’t cry or show emotion as she battled covid-19 on the front lines. But at the Essence Festival, she and her 3 youngsters explored spaces filled with other people who looked like them, played games in the carnival-themed good looks center, and just had fun.
On Saturday, I was leaving the center of the conference for the food and wine segment when I heard a triumphant “We made it!”
The wine of Mercedes Frierson, 35 years old. Frierson had recently left her ten-year career as Associate Director of Training at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. She posed next to a sticker on the brand’s floor under the cheerful gaze of her best friend, Sheatarra. After months of following cheap flights from their respective homes on the West Coast and Midwest, they finally arrived.
“By participating in homeless services, you revel in a lot of trauma, especially indirect trauma,” Frierson said, recalling the overwhelming number of ailments and deaths he encountered among the black network of homeless people while running the pandemic on Skid Row. “So to be here and see other people have life and laugh, and we turn to music and all that, it brings joy, and you just need to say, ‘Thank you, my God, for life. ‘”
This sense of resilience has not escaped Blake Newby, Essence’s good-looking and tasteful editor, who joined the team during the pandemic. “act of resistance,” he said.
At the end of the 4 days, he had shared a room with Vice President Kamala Harris (who participated in a wonderful verbal exchange with actress Keke Palmer, the former star of Nickelodeon’s “True Jackson, VP”), Janet Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Nicki Minaj, Lil’Kim, and Issa Rae.
The real balm, however, came from the festival-going community. I broke bread with a dozen of the three hundred black women who had driven their motorcycles, motorcycles, and even three-wheeled Slingshots across the country for the annual Black Girls Ride. on the way to the festival. I made new friends on crowded sidewalks waiting for sporadic rains and discovered some old ones I hadn’t noticed in years. I added my voice to a chorus that filled an entire N. F. L. stadium. with songs. I wandered aimlessly through the streets of New Orleans, eating, clapping, smiling, and dancing in line with other people who looked and felt like family.
There is something to be said for thousands of other people who have had reports collected in one position at the same time with the aim of laughing and empowering themselves.
Lindsey Augustin, 23, works as a qualified practical nurse and emergency medical technician in Stratford, Connecticut. In her day job, she feels her colleagues speechless at her golden hair, the hairstyle being an anomaly in her predominantly white workspaces. She wasn’t able to help However, keep in mind the many accolades she and her local friend, Ryenne, earned during their trip. But what impressed her most was the undeniable fact of sharing a live party with a network of other black women.
“Virtual occasions have been helpful, but there’s nothing better than doing a song with the same lyrics live again, experiencing the same dance or learning it on the spot,” he said. -and-then whoever is by my side, we are united. We are a people.
As someone who never attended a traditionally black college, never joined a sorority, and comes from a fractured circle of relatives with no barbecues or annual meetings, this delight is the closest thing to in-person communion I wanted.
On the last day, Sunday afternoon, I would awkwardly drag my suitcase in the hotel elevator, heading towards the conference center for the last time. My carry-on luggage fell to the ground, the few items I had randomly stacked spilled on the floor. Two black women ran to my side and picked up what they could. Extending her outstretched hands, I replied, “Thank you, sister. “
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