KUUMBA, Toronto’s Black futures festival, is celebrating a 30th anniversary during the month of February 2025 at Harbourfront. Music, theatre, dance, spoken word, film and more are on offer during the month-long festival.
The general theme of the performances and other events looks to focus on the Black journey to liberation, and healing via the arts while smashing stereotypes.
We spoke to lead producer Diana Webley about some of KUUMBA’s highlights this year.
KUUMBA 2025: The Festival
“It’s a huge legacy,” Webley says of KUUMBA’s three-decade history. There’s a variety of performances, talks, films, and more. “I think it’s something people of all cultures can enjoy.”
Bob Marley Birthday Tribute (February 6)
Three-time JUNO nominee Jay Douglas and the All Stars will celebrate Bob Marley on what would have been his 80th birthday. With a wide-ranging legacy that only continues to grow over the decades, Marley’s artistry as a singer, musician and songwriter can be subsumed in his cultural legend.
Jay Douglas is a 45-year veteran of the entertainment business, and first took the stage in Montego Bay, Jamaica. His repertoire has included R&B and jazz standards along with Caribbean genres. He was a staple of Toronto and Montreal nightclubs during their golden era in the 1970s, and went on to perform at festivals and on stages like Roy Thomson Hall and Massey Hall.
Douglas, along with his band and a string of guest artists, will dig deep into Marley’s music, and examine it from different angles. Webley says the list of guest artists and musicians (which will be confirmed closer to the date) includes people who worked with Bob Marley, and auditioned for him.
“There are very deep roots within the tribute,” Webley says.
His remarkable legacy will be celebrated by what started it all: the music that has gone on to influence music and musicians across a broad spectrum of genres from jazz to pop. “I think that’s the reason why it makes sense to hear the lyrics and the sounds in different ways,” Diana adds. It allows for hearing the familiar music with a fresh perspective.
She mentions Toronto-based musician Kairo Maclean, who became the youngest winner of the JUNO Award for Reggae Recording of the Year at the Juno Awards in 2022. “[It’ll be interesting] to get his spin on how he interprets Bob,” she says, “as a new generation.”
Iconic Canadian singer Liberty Silver (and fellow JUNO winner) has been added to the roster as well.
“Another reason behind having JUNO award winners front this kind of concert is to also give them their flowers,” Diana says.
Jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and music producer Eddie Bullen will be part of the performance too, along with other guest artists to be confirmed.
Dance
Dance is a big part of KUUMBA 2025. “It’s that form of expression that is ever evolving,” Webley points out.
The KUUMBA 365 project celebrates Black culture all year round at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. The second iteration of the project, set to launch in February, will include the work of choreographers Katlyn Addison, Lua Shayenne, Esie Mensah and Syreeta Hector as they respond to the gallery’s fall 2024 show. Their creative process will be documented via interviews and diary entries, with a live performance to kick things off.
“Dance has always been part of this celebration because there’s healing in dance,” Webley says. “It’s really the expression with these different dance forms that brings a sense of community and healing.”
Kuumba gives audience members a chance to participate via workshops in different genres, along with a dance party.
“Looking even at the vogueing workshop, the history of voguing and where that comes from,” she explains. It’s about being who you want to be without restrictions. “In a way that you’re not judged.”
Silent Legacy is a dance duet between Krump aficionado Adeline Kerry Cruz and Siaska Chareyre, a work choreographed by Maud Le Pladec. It takes the stage on February 13 and 15.
“It’s quite stunning,” Webley says of the work that blends contemporary and urban dance. “It’s in your face.”
Based in France, Maud Le Pladec studied at the National Choreographic Center of Montpellier, and has worked with the Paris National Opera, among others. She became director of the National Choreographic Centre of Orleans in 2017, and is a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters and of the National Order of Merit. Maud was the Director of Dance for the four ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Olympics Games, and becomes director of the CCN-Ballet de Lorraine as of January 2025.
Adeline Kerry Cruz began hip-hop dance classes at the age of four. In 2019, she became part of a competitive dance troupe, and in 2020, performed in a dance film for director Vincent René Lortie and the Jacob Jonas The Company. That’s when she was introduced to krump, a street dance genre, and she’s never looked back. Her journey in the art continues, with a special interest in telling stories with dance.
Dancer Siaska Chareyre is based in Lyon, France. She began her career as a modern jazz dancer before taking a detour into contemporary dance at the Conservatoire de Lyon. Siaska graduated from Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in 2023.
It’s a high energy, fast-paced piece. “It’s probably going to be hard for folks to stay in their seats,” Webley says. “It’s an entire body experience. Sitting in your seat, you’re going to feel something.”
With a Voguing Workshop (February 8), Breaking Workshop (February 16), and the Rock Harder B-boy and B-girl competition (February 15 and 16), you don’t have to be a professional dancer (yet) to get in on the joy and healing power of movement at KUUMBA.
“Get your sneakers on and join us,” Diana urges, “It’s that freedom of expression that will open you up. If you’re not brave enough, what’s stopping you?”
The Eighth Day: A Play Reading by Nicole Brooks (February 8)
Nicole Brooks, whose credits include work as a filmmaker, director, performer, playwright, composer, curator, teacher, and more, has had her previous projects broadcast on VisionTV, the CBC, OMNI, and other prominent platforms over a two decade plus career.
Brooks is probably best known today for the landmark production Obeah Opera, which she composed, wrote, and performed in. The opera tells the story of the Salem witch trials through the eyes of Obeah, a slave woman from the Caribbean. The work has been staged in various forms and versions between 2009 and 2019, and in 2020 was an official Festival Selection of the 2020 National Alliance of Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals in New York.
The work takes European-based classical music and fuses it with blues, jazz, gospel, Caribbean and African genres. The result was a combination of opera, dance, visual art, traditional and musical theatre. Brooks and Obeah Opera are newly back in North America after a tour to South Africa in the fall of 2024.
Brooks’ new play takes audiences back to Black Montréal in 1928. There, in a secretive speakeasy called Lelu’s Cave, a mysterious woman recruits a motley collection of nine Femme Noires burlesque performers for a new show.
But, it’s not just a new show — it’s the end of the old, and the dawn of a new day.
After the reading, Brooks will answer questions from the audience in a Q&A session.
“It’s been in the works in a while,” says Webley of the play.
Audiences can expect authentic details of the era to be incorporated into the story. “She definitely digs deep into her research,” she adds. “The fact that she brings it into old Montréal, Black Montréal, and having it in a speakeasy, it’s phenomenal,” she says.
Details about the project are deliberately scarce. “I don’t want to give too much away.” Webley does promise that audience will hear some of the sounds and songs of the pivotal era in the reading event.
“I can’t wait for people to hear it.” It was a natural to program for KUUMBA. “I think what caught my eye was kind of the […] music of the time, the burlesque performers.” Once again, Brooks will be writing and producing the show herself.
“I’m happy for Harborfront to showcase her work.”
And more…
Along with performances, the Festival includes a variety of talks and panel discussions, short and feature films, including Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, a film documentary and Q&A about the life of the late Canadian trans soul singer. Soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee’s short film A New Song will screen before the documentary feature.
Iconic rapper Maestro Fresh Wes’s short film Wes to the East – Forward Movin’ will be shown before the full-length feature A Mother Apart, a film about motherhood and healing by Laurie Townshend. The films are screened in partnership with The National Film Board.
- Find more details about KUUMBA [HERE].
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