Nigerian megastar Davido is gearing up for his A.W.A.Y festival in Atlanta.
Davido has enjoyed an impressive 2023 with his fourth album ‘Timeless’ breaking records and his hit single ‘Unavailable’ featuring Musa Keys enjoying international success.
In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Davido shared his vision with Are We African Yet? (A.W.A.Y) festival. According to the megastar, he wants to curate a festival that will last for many years and take African culture to different parts of the world.
Davido shares that he intends to give African artists a platform to perform and connect with their fans internationally. He also sees the A.W.A.Y festival as a platform to showcase African culture globally and take charge of the narrative.
“So years ago it was the other way around where it’s like the same way we have people coming to Africa, which we love, investing, bringing their own culture over there. Having festivals, in the s
ame way, we should do the same over here. And that’s why I’m having this festival that’s going to be coming every year-
I want to give [different artists] the opportunity to come every year, different times to come and perform. Because they have fans here and they don’t know. Because internet, all you have to do is just drop a song out on TikTok and it’s gone. Somebody a billion miles away, it could be their best song and you wouldn’t even know.
I feel like we have to own our culture too. We can’t wait for somebody to bring the idea and be like, “Yo, Afrobeats is growing.” Let’s go register for African Coachella or something like that. I’m like, “No, we got to do this ourselves because this is ours. So we got to own it.” Down the line if somebody wants to partner…
But the vision I have, I’m talking 10 years, 20 years down the line. The vision I have is to create it to be something that is for the culture, not particularly mine. I might be behind it, producing it, All of that. But it’s something I’m doing for the culture, which Atlanta definitely is going to have the first couple, but we’ve spoken about definitely moving it around because we are everywhere. So definitely I can see maybe LA. I can see Toronto, definitely. So we’re definitely going to move it around.”
Davido has enjoyed a successful 2023 which is reflected by his 3 nominations at the 2024 Grammy Awards. The maiden edition of the A.W.A.Y festival will take place on November 18, 2023, at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta Georgia.