'From soil to soul'
Mar. 29—NORLINA — The inaugural Soul City International Roots Music Festival is coming April 13, right down the road from the famous sign.
There are some big names on the slate — Sona Jobarteh, a Gambian instrumentalist who specializes in the kora, a common instrument in west Africa. It looks like something between a banjo and a harp and has a unique metallic twangy sound.
Next is Drea D'nur out of Buffalo, N.Y., a singer and pianist who has written an album focused on spiritual healing through music. She's a visual artist, too, boasting an award-winning exhibit that explores the late great Nina Simone through theatre, photography, art and a documentary.
A little closer to home is Jasme' Kelly from Durham, whose music fuses soul, folk, jazz and blue into something unique. Dezarie, a mononymic reggae singer out of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, will perform last.
Shavon Marie thanked her "wonderful team" and networking ability for securing those names — she has performed alongside Kelly and Jobarteh before.
She's the principal at the Imani Nia School of Fine Arts and Trades. She traces her ancestry back to Soul City — some relatives had a hand in building the city's architectural foundations, she said.
One Floyd McKissick conceptualized Soul City as a majority Black community in Warren County, one of the state's poorest at the time, according to the North Carolina History Project.
By 1972, he secured $15.7 million in federal and state funding, with which he built a steel and glass factory and a medical facility.
The Raleigh News and Observer published an expose into alleged corruption and misuse of funds three years later and soon thereafter, a General Accounting Office investigation turned up no wrongdoing. Regardless, businesses refused to invest in the project afterward. Federal support dried up in 1979.
She hopes the event modernizes the city's onetime goal of creating a self-sustainable community for all by getting people interested in vocational trades and fine arts, "to be a village," she said.
The gates at Seven Springs Vineyard, 332 Axtell Ridgeway Road, open at 1 p.m. The tunes will commence at 2 p.m. and continue till 9. All the while, five food trucks will serve diverse palates that will reflect the diversity of the audience organizers hope to attract, said Soul City Community Development Center Director Collin Brown.
Black and White Coffee is one. The others will offer Caribbean, Jamaican, soul food, African fusion and vegan cuisines. Free face painting and Henna will be onsite.
"We want everyone who comes to feel a part of something bigger," said Brown. "It's a chance to experience music in a way that really connects us, makes us think and gets us moving."
Soul City was the natural location for the affair.
"We've got so much history, so much talent, and such a strong sense of community here — it felt like a no-brainer to bring all that together into one big, unforgettable experience," said Brown.
Children get in free while adults pay $30 apiece. All proceeds go towards the nonprofit SCCDC, itself an apparatus that tries to keep the original vision of creating a shining, self-sustainable city by planting trees, renovating buildings and erecting a greenhouse and community center in the area, said Brown.
