Music

Here’s what to know about the hip-hop festival coming to City Hall Plaza this weekend

Saturday's GLD FSTVL will feature national headliners and local artists in "an epic celebration of music and community."

The five members of STL GLD pose for a photo outside Boston's brutalist City Hall building.
The group STL GLD will headline a free concert on Boston’s City Hall Plaza to celebrate 50 years of hip-hop. From left, they are: Moe Pope, Janos “The Arcitype” Fulop, Christopher Talken, Tim Hall, and Jonathan Ulman. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

By Chloe Courtney Bohl

1 minute to read

Boston-based hip-hop group STL GLD and the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture are putting on a festival to celebrate hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, and the whole city is invited.

From noon until 10 p.m. on Saturday, City Hall Plaza will fill with music as local and national artists and DJs converge to celebrate hip-hop and community at the first-annual GLD FSTVL (pronounced “gold festival”).

Atlanta’s EarthGang and New York’s Dead Prez are headlining the free, public festival, but the rest of the performers are local. STL GLD is playing, of course, as well as Oompa (from Roxbury), Van Buren Records (Brockton), Latrell James, Billy Dean Thomas, kei (all from Boston), and the Cambridge Community Center’s youth program The Hip Hop Transformation.

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The festival will feature four local DJs, too: DJ E DUBBLE, DJ WhySham, DJ Slipwax, and DJ Bobby Bangers. 

A beer garden and a host of local food trucks selling Caribbean, Mexican, Vietnamese and Asian-fusion fares will round out the festival lineup.

It’s no coincidence that the organizers chose City Hall Plaza, the political and geographic heart of Boston, for their festival. Boston has a wealth of hip-hop talent, and those performers deserve recognition and an opportunity to be paid for their art in their home city, members of STL GLD told The Boston Globe.

“This is what it means when a value is placed on a community of individuals and a genre of music that is so important to the city of Boston,” said Tim Hall, a STL GLD member and festival organizer.

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“With a vibrant atmosphere and amazing performances,” the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture announced, “GLD FSTVL promises to be an epic celebration of music and community.”

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