The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) proudly presents its 8th annual Afribembé festival, taking place on Sunday, August 16 during Harlem Week’s iconic ‘Harlem Day’.  

This year, Afribembé: Under One Sun aligns with CCCADI’s 50th Anniversary Year, carrying forward five decades of legacy, and with our year-long theme of AfriCarnaval, honoring Carnival as a living practice of culture, joy, and resistance.  

For the third year in a row, Afribembé is presented in collaboration with Harlem Week, whose fitting theme for this year is “Honoring Our Legacy”.  

Afribembé: Under One Sun is responsible for closing out the show on the Harlem Day Main Stage, from 7pm-8pm, featuring performances by Pan Evolution Steel Orchestra and Kofago Dance Ensemble, and an opening procession led by Los Pleneros de la 21 and Danza Fiesta.  Viannca Vélez will serve as host for the evening.  Festival-goers can also explore CCCADI’s Ọjà Marketplace, giveaways, and a selection of CCCADI archival materials from our Community Archiving Lab for Culture and Justice.  

Just across the street, from 12pm to 5pm, the Afribembé Children’s Village will bring the festival to our youngest community members at Howard Bennett Park, with offerings of face painting, storytelling, Carnival headpiece making, and games for kids of all ages.  

Our title of “Under One Sun” highlights a phrase used throughout CCCADI’s history as a way of reminding us that the African Diaspora is one community, connected across oceans and continents.  It also pays tribute to the name of CCCADI’s official printed newsletter throughout the 1980s and 90s, and to a historic series of Under One Sun summer concerts presented by CCCADI during the late 1990s.

Join us now, Under One Sun, in 2026, as we celebrate 50 years of CCCADI and a legacy of uniting the African Diaspora by highlighting its musical expressions, Carnival traditions, and endless creative spirit.
FREE - Registration not required.

For Harlem Week’s Full Schedule of Activities Visit:
https://harlemweek.com/

AFRIBEMBÉ

ARTISTS

  • Compelled by a need to preserve the Afro-Puerto Rican expressions of Bomba and Plena, Los Pleneros de la 21 (LP21) was founded in 1983 in la Casita De Chema/El Rincón Criollo in the South Bronx by National Endowment for the Arts' Heritage Fellow Juan J. Gutiérrez Rodríguez and his mentor Marcial Reyes Arvelo. For over 40 years, Los Pleneros de la 21 have promoted, presented, performed and preserved these heritage practices through year-round community and educational programs offered through the New York-Tri State area and international touring initiatives.

    Los Pleneros have broken barriers for the presence of Bomba, Plena and Puerto Rican heritage expressions as the first Bomba and Plena ensemble presented in Carnegie Hall, the only Bomba and Plena ensemble to have toured to the USSR, and as an ensemble that has toured to over 150 cities on a global scale.

    At the same time, Los Pleneros de la 21 have maintained a robust series of programs and events offered in and for the local community, including cultural events that promote place-making and place-keeping in El Barrio and the Bronx, like the annual celebrations of Las Fiestas de Cruz and La Fiesta Navideña, as well as the 35+ year old Bomba and Plena Community Workshops series - a program responsible for teaching hundreds of youth on the performances and practice of Bomba and Plena. The Workshops have been the school and formation for several of today's next generation practitioners and elders currently upholding these traditions, including LeAna Lopez, Camilo Molina Gaetán, and Nelson Mateo González--LP21's Musical Director. Pairing accessible programs for the community with performances and productions presented globally, Los Pleneros have earned the title of New York's cultural ambassadors to Bomba and Plena.

    The intergenerational ensemble has recorded five albums, having received a Grammy Nomination for best World Music album, and is known for its original musical arrangements that integrates genres like guaracha, son, salsa, jazz and even hip hop, while also upholding the integrity of the traditional, ancestral sounds of Bomba and Plen

  • Kofago Dance Ensemble exists at the nexus of African dance tradition and the Black experience in America. Our work is focused on healing and ritual through the performing arts.

    Founded in 2015, Kofago began as a social justice project highlighting police brutality against Black men in Washington, DC. Founder Kevin McEwen later relocated to New York, where he began teaching in the NYC area. After the death of his father in 2017, McEwen revived Kofago, this time dedicated to social justice and healing through the performing arts.

    Kofago's dance repertoire pulls heavily from over 20 years of McEwen's West African dance experience and cultural research, and is steeped in the dance traditions of the Senegambia region of West Africa and the Caribbean. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Bakary Fall, the company channels these traditions toward ritual and community healing throughout the African Diaspora.

    Kofago presents artistic work that embodies healing principles through storytelling.

    The company's choreography and dance workshops are used to engender, express, actualize, and facilitate ritualistic healing processes through dancing and drumming, following the conventions of dance ritual, which are historically African dance techniques that have been altered or adjusted by members of African Diaspora cultures.

    Lollise emigrated to the US to study chemistry; after college she worked in a spinal cord injury lab in Philadelphia, left science to become a handbag designer in New York, and then joined a band. While refining her craft on tour with other projects in Europe, Nigeria and the US, she began writing her own music, developing her vision and voice. 

    She released her debut singles with captivating DIY music videos during the lockdown of 2020, then released two EPs – Looking At You (2020) and Unborn (2022) – before completing her debut full-length I hit the water, released September 2024 with Switch Hit Records. She also co-wrote and featured on the Delasi song “Learn from Adversity” (Brownswood Recordings, 2024).

    Lollise creates hybrid songs for this moment, taking influence from the music she grew up with – Setswana and Kalanga folk songs, '80s and '90s South African electronic bubblegum and kwaito, Congolese soukous and Zimbabwean sungura – and the music she has been exposed to in New York, including Afrobeat, new wave, and art-pop. 

    Lollise has performed extensively in New York, from DIY community spaces to arts institutions including BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn, Public Records, BAM, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn Museum, Little Island Festival, Elsewhere and Symphony Space. Her music has been featured on Hearing Things, Pop Matters, KEXP,Rolling Stone,Bandcamp Radio,Bandcamp Daily, Okay Africa,and New Sounds with John Schaefer on WNYC radio.

  • Danza Fiesta: Baile y Teatro Puertorriqueño is a New York-based folk dance company under the direction of Gilda Rivera-Pantojas. Danza Fiesta presents the vibrant traditions of Puerto Rico through Bomba, featuring live music, energetic dance, and the colorful Carnival characters known as Vejigantes and Cabezudos.

  • Pan Evolution Steel Orchestra, Inc. (PESO) is a Non-profit corporation/organization which was formed in November, 2015.  This music organization uses the steelpan as a platform to promote education, culture and unity - both locally and internationally.  We also believe in enforcing the core values of respect, responsibility, intensity and dedication. There is no greater joy for a community, than to see the growth and success of its youth.  PESO’s mission is to convey to the youths of our community, the fine art of making music on the steelpan, while facilitating the growth and development of our young men and women into society. Our aim is to produce professional players who would develop and grow in the steel pan world and later become renowned performers, steel pan arrangers and artistry musicians, while producing music in all genres. Pan Evolution has performed at many events throughout the New York City area and outside of New York City.  The band competes in the annual West Indian American Day Carnival Association (WIADCA) competition and was successful in placing 2nd in 2016, the first year of entering.  In 2018 and 2019 respectively they copped 3rd place. When the competition resumed in 2023 the band placed 3rd and finally copped 1st in 2024.  For the past three years running, they have been in the top three positions in the New York Junior Panorama competition.  They are also the two-time “Pan Is Sweet” competition winners.  PESO, has won numerous accolades, and has been known to give riveting public and private crowd-pleasing performances at many other venues.  The members of Pan Evolution Steel Orchestra (PESO) look forward to passing on their tradition of success and great achievements, which can only be achieved by following their motto: Together as One.


  • Viannca Velez is a cultural steward, artist, storyteller, and communications strategist. Her career spans broadcast journalism and podcasting, as well as the development of fundraising, marketing, narrative, and community engagement strategies for nonprofit organizations. She has held roles at FiOS1 News Long Island and SportsNet New York (SNY) and previously served as Communications and New Media Director at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute. Today, she is the Communications and Narrative Director at Represent Justice, where she oversees the organization’s communications strategy in support of its mission to use storytelling to end mass incarceration.

    Viannca brings together her communications expertise, artistic practice, and commitment to community by moderating and facilitating cultural conversations and experiences throughout New York City and New Jersey. She is a practitioner of the Afro-Puerto Rican musical traditions of Bomba and Plena and Afro-Dominican Palos. She performs with Segunda Quimbamba and Legacy Women NYC, organizes with the NJ Bomba Collective, and serves on the board of directors of Los Pleneros de La 21.

    A graduate of Seton Hall University, Viannca is also the creator and host of the Seton Hall Pirate’s Eye Alumni Podcast, where she shares the stories and experiences of the university’s alumni community.

 

AFRIBEMBÉ TAKES THE STAGE AT HARLEM WEEK! 

The Afribembé Festival is CCCADI’s annual Pan-African cultural celebration honoring the music, art, and traditions of the global African Diaspora.

Inspired by El Festival de Santiago Apóstol en El Barrio, the beloved Loiza Festival that brought Afro-Puerto Rican heritage to East Harlem for over 50 years, Afribembé continues that legacy with a diasporic lens. Presented each summer during August, the festival features live performances, dance, and community rituals that center joy, resistance, and cultural memory.

Its name reflects its spirit: “Afri”, for Africa, and “Bembé,” a word used across the Diaspora for gatherings filled with rhythm, connection, and celebration. Now in its eighth year, Afribembé transforms public space into a vibrant stage for Black and Brown excellence.

HARLEM WEEK began in the summer of 1974 as a “one-time only,” one-day event (HARLEM DAY) with the huge objective of creating a much-needed “positive vibe” and pulling the greater Harlem community’s residents, businesses, religious, educational, arts and cultural institutions out of the most severe economic and social doldrums that New York City and the nation had faced in generations.

Utilizing the well-known reputation of the 1st Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, HARLEM DAY was decreed “THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND HARLEM RENAISSANCE” by the legendary Ossie Davis, who said the day “provided a much-needed spiritual boost” for the entirety of Harlem.

That “spiritual boost” will continue through HARLEM WEEK 2025’s conferences, sporting events, cultural events and festivities, offering multiple positive benefits for Harlem, New York City and the “Harlems of the World.”

ABOUT

HARLEM

WEEK

VENDORS

If you are interested in joining the festivities as a vendor, please visit: 

https://harlemweek.com/sponsorship/

AFRIBEMBÉ

The word Bembé is an African word carried throughout the Diaspora with various meanings. From drumming, to rhythm, to party, we utilize the word Bembé as one of terms that connects our Diaspora together in music, joy and community.

This event is rain or shine. Please note all events are subject to change.

AFRIBEMBÉ is made possible by: 
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs - Coalition for Theaters of Color, the New York City Council, Ford Foundation, Gilman Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations.