Time moves slowly on Seventh Avenue North. Sometimes it seems to creep as insidiously as kudzu along a cinderblock wall. Other times, it is softer, mellower, evoking days of porch sittin’, slow sippin’ and smoke-drenched blues.
As the Ward 5 councilman for the district, Kabir Karriem has seen multiple sides of the Seventh Avenue story. He grew up navigating these narrow, sometimes tough streets. He saw his mother, Helen Karriem, take a penchant for home cooking and turn it into a successful restaurant nearby. He saw the historic Queen City Hotel fall. He saw black-owned businesses fail and crime rates rise.
This weekend, at the 29th annual Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival, he hopes people see the neighborhood he remembers — and what he believes it can someday be again.
The event has grown considerably since the days when a flatbed truck and an amplifier provided the foundation and backbeat to a glorified block party. In 2009, Grammy nominees K-Ci and JoJo came to town, bringing 15,000 people to Seventh Avenue North. Last year, rhythm and blues artists Dru Hill were nearly upstaged by Jackson State’s high-stepping, fancy-footed marching band, the Sonic Boom of the South.
As one of the Southeast Tourism Society’s Top 20 Events, the pressure is on to make each year’s festival bigger and better than the year before. It’s a challenge Karriem hopes he’s met with this year’s headlining artists — Grammy nominee Calvin Richardson, Glenn Jones and Silk.
The festival begins at 5 p.m. tonight, with the bulk of the activities taking place Saturday.
It’s an eclectic mix which Karriem said he hopes will appeal to people of all ages and walks of life. Besides the rhythm and blues for which the festival has drawn its reputation, there will also be gospel music from groups like the Mississippi Nightingales, the Stephens Chapel Mass Choir, the Caldwell Family and the Kingdom Vision International Praise Team, a step show, a segment honoring veterans (including a tribute to the all-black 65th Aviation Squadron of 1942), a dove release and a tribute to the late Easter Mae Weatherspoon, a longtime resident who was a passionate advocate for the revitalization and rebirth of Seventh Avenue.
Even as he takes pride in what he calls “the biggest free festival in Mississippi,” Karriem recognizes that without local residents, he wouldn’t be able to attract bigger and bigger acts each year.
“It’s about knowing the right people and treating people right when they get here,” Karriem said Thursday morning. “When (musicians) come to Columbus, the hospitality they’re treated with … they spread that word out to the industry. It’s important we keep that tradition going.”
It’s an extension of the area’s rich blues history, which once saw legends like B.B. King, Louis Armstrong, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Duke Ellington drift through town, setting up camp at the Queen City Hotel, patronizing the businesses of Seventh Avenue North and rocking the walls of Catfish Alley.
“You should hear the stories of the people who live here, who remember,” Karriem said. ” … Anything you needed was on Seventh Avenue. It was the hub. This was where people ate, did their shopping — Seventh Avenue and Catfish Alley.”
He is too young to remember the “heyday” of the 1950s and 1960s, but he’s heard the stories.
As the walls of segregation fell, so too fell a culture of tightly-knit, black-owned businesses and locals who rarely strayed from the streets where they were raised. Businesses moved across town — or closed completely. Residents, too, made homes elsewhere. Shops were shuttered. Family homesteads gave way to graffiti and weeds.
Two years ago, a local apartment complex owner complained to the city council, comparing the area to Bourbon Street due to its proliferation of late-night, alcohol-fueled skirmishes. But it could be like Beale Street in Memphis, Karriem contends.
He is currently working on a revitalization project which will improve the pothole-strewn streets, install street lamps and hopefully replace the flashing blue lights he sees all too often with the strobe lights of high-caliber musical acts.
“It doesn’t have to stay like this,” he said. “I see a blighted area with rich history that needs some love right now. … If we take the initiative and the time to just put money back in these areas, we can make a difference.”
The Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival is free and open to the public. Events will center at the intersection of Seventh Avenue North and 15th Street, beginning tonight at 5 p.m. Muzik in Action will perform tonight at 8 p.m.
Saturday’s festivities will open with a prayer at 10 a.m., followed by gospel music from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The veterans’ tribute, along with the dove release, will begin at 1 p.m. Glenn Jones will take the stage at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, followed by Calvin Richardson at 7:15 p.m. and Silk at 8:25 p.m.
Lawn chairs are welcome, but coolers will not be allowed. Food vendors will be available.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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