
For over 25 years, this annual Brooklyn festival has featured a 2-day summer celebration. Friday night would kick off a weekend of fun with a dance party, performances by local artists, and DJ-curated tunes. The festival would continue into Saturday on the scenic Red Hook waterfront with a free concert and soaring dance performances.
Hook Arts Media proudly partners with local nonprofits around Red Hook in addition to other NYC community organizations and agencies to provide free resources and family-friendly activities. Parents can enjoy the festival while kids can enjoy scavenger hunts, kayaking on the harbor, art classes, and face-painting. The summer festival would come to a close with a headliner performance as the sun sets on one of Brooklyn’s most scenic neighborhoods.
Hook Arts Media, along with the entire NYC arts and culture scene, is working to re-envision how to keep these cherished events available to our communities. The 2020 lineup will include powerful performances by The Resistance Revival Chorus, Illustrious Blacks, Taína Asili, and Martha Redbone, with special tributes to Red Hook’s young artists and local coronavirus relief efforts.
The 27th Annual Red Hook Fest will be LIVESTREAMED on Saturday, June 27th at 2:00 PM via RedHookFest.com
The Resistance Revival Chorus is a collective of more than 60 womxn who join together to breathe joy and song into the resistance and to uplift and center women’s voices. The great artist and activist Harry Belafonte once said, “when the movement is strong, the music is strong” and we attempt to live up to that call.
The RRC has been honored to perform with Kesha at the 2018 Grammys, on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon with Jim James, at Carnegie Hall with Phillip Glass, Carly Simon, and Patti Smith, at SummerStage with Angelique Kidjo, at Babefest with Ani DiFranco, with Natalie Merchant, and most recently with Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner from The National.
With inspiration from artists like Prince, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Depeche Mode, and George Clinton, The Illustrious Blacks have arrived with a mission to fuse futuristic funk, hypnotic house, space disco, and synth-pop into pulsating positivity for the planet. The real-life married couple are not only co-pilots on their artistic voyage but are united in their fantastical journey through life.
In 2017, the duo The New York Times called Bed-Stuy’s “favorite creative couple,” released their highly anticipated debut EP, Neo Afro Futuristic Psychedelic Surrealistic Hippy, on Concierge Records. The EP featured the high energy single “Blast Off,” the seductive “Red Light,” the thought provoking “Delusions of Grandeur” and the anthemic “Black Like Jesus,” whose music video premiered on Billboard.com. In the same year, the dynamic duo found time to work on a remake of the 90s dance floor classic “Funk That!,” which spawned a popular music video. The Illustrious Blacks garnered international fame and found themselves touring to Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe, Canada, and being booked to perform in major music festivals such as Roskilde, Splore, Return to Rio and Babylon. Back in NYC, the globetrotters took their live shows to respected venues like Central Park Summerstage, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, The Shed, Joe’s Pub, Le Poisson Rouge, House of Yes, C’mon Everybody and performed opening sets for respected artists like Lalah Hathaway, Nakhane and Cupcakke.
Taína Asili is an Albany, New York-based Puerto Rican singer and activist carrying on the tradition of her ancestors, fusing past and present struggles into one soulful and defiant voice. She performs an energetic fusion of powerful vocals laid over Afro-Latin, reggae, and rock, bringing love, resistance, and ancestral remembrance to venues across the globe. In January 2017, Taina performed for over half a million people at The Women’s March on Washington. Her music video “No Es Mi Presidente” (Not My President) premiered in Rolling Stone, The Huffington Post named her in a list of in a list of “12 Freedom Fighting Bands To Get You Through the Trump Years”; Billboard Magazine featured her in a list of “11 Songs of Protest & Resistance by Latino Artists”; and her music has been aired several times on Democracy Now!. During Taína Asili’s 20-year career of creating music for social change, she has toured within and outside of the U.S. numerous times. She has shared the stage with renowned artists such as Alicia Keys, Talib Kweli, Janelle Monáe, and Tom Morello, and activists such as Cornel West, Barbara Smith, and Angela Davis.