The Essence Music Festival, known as "the party with a purpose," is an annual music festival which started in 1995 as a one-time event to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of ESSENCE, a magazine aimed primarily towards African-American women. It is the largest event celebrating African-American culture and music in the United States. Locally referred to as the Essence Fest, it has been held in New Orleans, Louisiana every year since 1995 except for 2006, where it was held in Houston, Texas due to Hurricane Katrina. It features artists simultaneously performing on a main stage as well as four standing-room only superlounge stages.
In 2008, for the first time since its 1995 inception, the festival was not produced by the original producer team. Instead, Essence Communications, owner of the festival and the Essence magazine, contracted Rehage Entertainment Inc., to help reinvigorate the festival's presentation and marketing. A new main stage facelift was designed by production designer Stefan Beese and instituted by the new regime at Essence Communications & Rehage Entertainment.
Traxx Girls Inc. has partnered with Studfish Productions to offset the first annual Essence Weekend for Ladies Edition of Essence Music Festival by hosting events for the alternative lifestyle women who enjoy attending Essence Music Festival weekend, but want to attend events that cater to alternative women.
Famous quotes containing the words essence, music and/or festival:
“The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.”
—Anita Brookner (b. 1938)
“... the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education.... The three R’s, a little music and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby”Man innocent rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn”Ma hard rhyme; for “school,” “fool”Ma babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)