Memphis' TONE Celebrates Community With Annual 'Juneteenth: A Family Reunion' Weekend
TONE's Juneteenth celebration. Photo by Noah Stewart
Juneteenth, which originates from Texas, has now grown into a federal holiday where Black Americans and the surrounding diaspora across the U.S. commemorate the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans. The beauty of the holiday (which is this Monday, June 19) is that every generation celebrates it differently. But what remains at the foundation is community and love.
In Memphis, TONE art gallery has a fun-filled weekend planned that highlights the local creators of the Southern city.
Juneteenth: A Family Reunion, is an annual celebration in Memphis – a weekend of events celebrating the Black community and culture and honoring those who paved the way for today. It kicked off on June 15 with a B.A.P.S. screening followed by a Spades tournament at Inkwell today (June 16). On Saturday, June 17 the GALA (which includes the event, a dinner and afterparty) will be held in downtown Memphis at the Cadre. The theme is B.A.P.S. meets Bridgerton and raises money for TONE and Orange Mound Tower, a 7-acre mixed-use development that will transform a 1950s feed mill into a creative center and safe space where talent can both live and gather resources to flourish. Tickets are available for purchase here.
Juneteenth: A Family Reunion Festival on Sunday, June 18 concludes the weekend. It'll feature live performances by Black Memphis artists (Project Pat, Duke Deuce, Hitkidd plus Lukah, Talibah Safiya, Mafia 9 and Austin Crui$e, Idi X Teco, J Buck, Ashley Ave, DJ Nico, MYAI Drumline, DJ set and more), local Black-owned food trucks and vendors, and Black games. Free tickets are available here.
READ MORE: How Memphis’ Orange Mound Tower Founders Are Rising Up For The Culture
Below, Victoria Jones (executive director and CEO of TONE) revisits special memories from previous Juneteenth celebrations and what's in store for this weekend.
It’s so great seeing the holiday become more celebrated, especially with us millennials and Gen Z. We’ve made the holiday our own. What are your thoughts on Juneteenth’s evolution?
I think ours started in 2019. That was our very first Juneteenth Celebration. So we did our first gala at the space. It was very much a DIY project. But it came together in the most innovative and beautiful way possible. We had to skip 2020, obviously. But since then, we have just continued to grow this opportunity for celebration.
When I was a kid, I felt like there wasn’t a ton of buzz around Juneteenth. But the stuff that I remember was community service-type things. It didn’t necessarily feel celebratory, it felt like a duty. So I think there was a really strong focus on how to make this feel as much like a celebration as possible. That gave us an opportunity to lean into the [question], “What is this truly glorious celebration of freedom? And not think about service of any kind?” We’re celebrating where we are right now—the strength of the ancestors that got us here, the elders that got us here. And we finna dance ‘till our feet fall off. So I think that's been the direction, just how we watched it grow and manifest. And there are a ton of historic Juneteenth celebrations in the city. But this, like you mentioned, is our opportunity to [put] our perspective on it and build something really special.
I was actually going to ask you about just the historic celebrations in Memphis because I know every city celebrates it in their own way.
We've got the OG celebration at Douglass Park. That was the first Juneteenth Celebration. They've been holding it down for 20-plus years. And it's very much what I've seen across the city of these neighborhood-centric celebrations, where folks are organizing within that direct neighborhood and then building out from there. There’s small business support, so a lot of vendors at almost every celebration. And then you get to see, from neighborhood to neighborhood, [people’s] favorite artist and performance art because almost all of them have that performance aspect.
For us at TONE, it’s been a lot about that family reunion piece. So we've been calling the “Juneteenth family reunion weekend.” Slavery obviously came with a bucket load of traumas for Black folks, but one of the really big traumas that I think about a lot is the way it tore our families apart. So it really is an opportunity to invite folks back to the South, and it goes Mississippi and Memphis and then the rest of the world. This is an opportunity to really invite folks back to their roots, back to their home, to partake in the celebration and honor our ancestors and think about where we’re headed in the future.
TONE's Victoria Jones. Photo by Madame Fraankie
I like that. So you mentioned 2019 earlier. Was that the first year that TONE started the celebrations?
So TONE has been an organization for about eight years. But 2019 was the very first year we were in our physical space. And so it was our first time actually hosting a celebration in our home. When we got to 2021, a year after the pandemic, it wasn’t quite safe enough to have people indoors again. So we focused on an outdoor activation. And that’s how we came up with having that huge festival at the Orange Mound Tower. And then that festival just blossomed out in a really incredible way. Obviously, I'm a little biased. [laughs]
I would love to know how you think you guys have maybe exceeded your own bar for this year’s celebration compared to what you did previously.
I love that. So in 2019, we just had that Gala, and then in 2021, we were able to do the festival. And then 2022, we were like “Man, do y’al think it's possible for us to pull in both?” And so we opened the weekend with the gala and then closed it with the festival. And then your chest out a little bit like, “Oh, I can do this, I can handle this!” And then it grew again from there.
So this year, really thinking about an extended weekend where we've got a film screening with a local film festival here in Memphis, where we'll get a chance to screen B.A.P.S. for the guests. And then every year for the gala, we do a themed black tie. So last year was Afrofuturism. And this year is B.A.P.S. So we're gonna screen the movie. And then Friday we’ll come with a Spades tournament that we’ll host at the gallery. And then Saturday will be the actual gala where we're talking black tie royalty: B.A.P.S. meets Bridgerton. It's a really an emphasis on Black royalty. So think Black-American princes and princesses. And then it'll close out with that huge festival.
Also, the artists that we see at the festival have just continued to elevate, partially because these artists are on their own track toward their emerging superstardom. So the artists that we've been working with since the festival started are just on a bigger platform and bigger stage in their own careers. With the support of some of the foundations around, we’ve been able to include some headliners. So we only had one headliner last year, and that was Duke Deuce. He’s coming back this year, but this time he’ll be accompanied by Hitkidd who produced “F.N.F.” by GloRilla. And then Project Pat is set to close out the show. So we got the new school and the legends of Memphis trap and hip hop. And then all that on a stage with a bunch of incredible emerging Memphis artists. So it's going to go crazy.
I want to touch back on the gala theme and—no pun intended—bridging the two concepts. I like to see this celebration of Black royalty. What’s your perspective on our generation straightening our crown and celebrating the royalty that we are?
Absolutely. I think there’s something really exciting about the opportunity to do Black American princes and princesses because oftentimes when we hear Black folks talk about royalty, we're having to reach all the way back across the seas. And I love that because that's obviously descended of great power and truth. But there's also an opportunity for us to celebrate the royalty that actually is happening right now here in America. So that Black American piece is gonna be an exciting piece to explore. We get to live in this ghetto-fabulousness and innovation of B.A.P.S. combined with this high royalty, I've seen some people's outfits. So I know we've got some of the grills, we got nails, we got do-rags. But then find a way to bridge that with these ball gowns and tuxedos. It’s just been really exciting.
I can’t wait to see the photos of everyone's outfits.
Me too. I think a really cool opportunity to celebrate what is this Black American culture. What is this descendant of centuries and centuries of perseverance through slavery into freedom, while we're still building out what freedom looks like to this day, I think just encapsulating that in our take on royalty is going to be a lot of fun. And is another opportunity for us to celebrate, because I love putting on ballgowns and I don't have any opportunities to do so. So why not do it for the ancestors one time?
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You gotta show out. Looking back on previous celebrations, do you have any favorite memories?
Absolutely. I got a couple. Talibah Safiya, who you got to meet on the media trip, right? The singer? She got on stage and invited all the femmes and women that were in the audience to get on stage with her. You watch Sailor Moon? You know when she transforms?
Yes, of course.
I feel like we watched Talibah do that. It was just the most incredible experience. They're all feeling themselves and she's gassing them up. My hair’s standing up [right now]. It was a moment! And so that from the festival would be one of my favorites. Duke Deuce was one of the folks who had actually performed earlier. He was in the crowd and was like, “You won't get in the pit!” Watching him make eye contact with this guy, he took his chain off and got down there with him. That was a really beautiful moment.
Then on the other end of it, we've had limited security guards there. We don’t want it to feel super over-policed like some spaces feel when it includes a lot of Black bodies. So what we’ve gotten to see, which I think is one of the most incredible experiences, is community round up around tense moments. We've had moments where folks are in disagreement or have had a little bit too much drinking. Your auntie doing the most or whatever.
We’ve gotten to see the community wraparound folks, instead of folks getting manhandled and thrown off the property. We’ve gotten to see what community looks like in that way too. That's honestly been one of my favorite moments. Because it’s love, it’s a different vibe when you get on the property. It’s not just up in some random place, we're here in Orange Mound where the first generation out of slavery built this space.
So it’s a real opportunity for that legacy to live in the celebration of what we're doing right now. And you can feel it—it’s thick in the air when you walk on the property. We’re feeling very covered. Also we’ve been trying to find ways to go bigger and better and feeling very encouraged in that space. There's also excitement in the city right now for what we're doing. It feels really good. Like I'm at the store and random people tell me how excited they are about Juneteenth.
I love that. One part that stood out to me just with the celebrations is a Spades tournament. I did a big feature on this upcoming movie, The Blackening. And spades is a big element in the film. It’s such a part of Black American culture. Anytime I bring it up to people, they have stories for days.
My mama taught us—I'm gonna use that word very loosely. She gave me some loose instructions, but I feel like everybody who’s at the Spades table has a very short amount of patience. So you get a few tips and tricks, but then the rest of it is watching and just working your way through it. But I think it is such a family reunion staple in the South. It was a fun opportunity also for us to tie in the B.A.P.S. and royalty theme. So we commissioned a local black artist to design playing cards for us with all Black royalty figures in the deck. That'll be what we use during the tournament. So it was a two-fold opportunity to do some fun stuff. We got a $200 cash prize. I mean, you should hear the competitiveness already and we haven't even opened the doors for it yet. [laughs] The actual tournament is gonna be Spades hand down. But we’ll have some dominoes and Uno and whatever else people who don't mess with Spades are playing. We'll have some of that too.
I love that the cards also have a royalty theme. It just shows how much thought you guys put into this. In terms of the actual festival, is there anything you wanted to highlight in particular?
I'm super pumped about the lineup this year. I think what's been really great for us is that we pay way above market rate to our musicians and artists that work with us. So everybody leaves the festival with a check. Last year, I think all that was left foodwise by the end of the night was french fries. I felt a real boost in our little Black economy for that day. That's been really exciting to watch those numbers grow. I tell people, “I know how much you think you need, but bring more than that, because you're gonna sell out.” That's been a really encouraging metric to watch.
That’s also reflective of just the importance of Juneteenth as well. Tou're not just throwing these events just because. You're actually paying it forward so that the local talent can also benefit. It keeps the financial ecosystem going.
Thank you, absolutely.
You're welcome. When we last spoke, you filled me in on what you have coming up for Orange Mound. Are there more updates?
So we have been continuing to fundraise for the construction. But I’ve been able to get to a place where we’ll actually be able to do some temporary activations. So we can get folks used to the tower and the property and the campus before it just opens up with some new shiny thing. So we're looking at what we’re calling the “mound market.” So it’d be a combination of a farmer's market, but also a maker's market where we’re inviting Black creatives, makers, artisans, and farmers in one of the warehouses once it's been renovated.
Then we've been looking at getting into the agricultural space. Not TONE explicitly, but we've got a partner called the Black Farmers Coalition. It’s just different Black farmers across the city that are doing great work and helping us imagine how this property could participate in the work that they want to do. So we’ll be growing fresh fruit fresh foods on the property here soon too. Thinking about performances, right now, the only major outdoor venue is the [Overton Park Shell], but there's an opportunity for us to launch one here in Orange Mound. Historically, The Shell stays away from rap acts. They're trying to get more inclusive but you know, that can be a waiting game. So how we’re going to be proactive right now is getting what is our most popular music—rap is the most popular music across the nation—but it is also the music right now that folks are looking to Memphis for. So the fact that we don't have any central place highlighted, I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to fill that gap in a temporary activation space.
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Nice. Anything with TONE in particular?
So we’ve got this music residency launching with Lukah, who's on the bill for Juneteenth. He's doing an international tour. So he’ll be going to Paris, England, Scotland and a couple other places. And then Talibah will be doing a symphony performance, which I think 350 guests will be there. We're seeing our musicians take off, so thinking about how we can participate in their career growth. That is, I believe in September or October.
And then we're headed back to Miami. So we got to travel to Miami for Basel and the NADA Art Fair. We worked last year with “Every N—a Deserves” to create what we call Black Haven in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Miami. We had a couple of artists' talks and wellness days. It’s like a real Black haven where Black creatives can pop out of the Basel craziness and tap into something that might feed their soul.
So we're looking at that again for December. We're also going to jumpstart a guest curator series. It’s focused all on curators in the South and it’ll be a year long, where we invite different phenomenal curators across the region to take over the space for 10 weeks and get as experimental [as they’d like]. Just their wildest dreams of curation and see how much we can make happen in this space. And then building that guest curator to almost into a cohort where they're also getting to know each other and getting to combine their networks. We’re truly trying to establish Memphis as the cultural beacon in the South and doing that through these intentional collaborations with other Southern curators and artists.
