Blockobana will be taking up space at Caribana with queer Black pride on August 6 in Regent Park.
It was evident last year after Black Lives Matter Toronto, and other queer Black activists, stopped the Pride parade, that many members of Toronto’s LGBTQ community saw queerness and blackness together for the first time.
Now, with Caribana in full swing, it would probably surprise many in the city to learn that there have been queer parties at Caribana for as long as Caribana has existed.
Caribana is widely seen by some as an unfriendly event to queers. Frequent questions end with, “Why doesn’t Black Lives Matter shut down Caribana?” This erases the many Black queer and trans people who are visible, organizing and breaking down barriers every year at Caribana.
Caribana—now celebrating its 50th anniversary year—is significantly important to many Torontonians, and that is certainly true for the city’s African and Caribbean LGBTQ communities. Queer and trans people people have always been here, taking up space at Caribana, celebrating blackness and queerness. Caribana is extremely queer, because queer people make spaces queer wherever they go, period.
At the epicentre of this burgeoning weekend of queer Black pride, is the fifth iteration of Blockobana, the brainchild of Blackness Yes, a volunteer-based community group that has been organizing at Toronto Pride for almost 20 years.
Blockobana is to Caribana what Blockorama is to Pride. The event serves not only to close the divide between the city’s intersecting Black communities, but also to quell the perceptions of those communities’ association to queerness.
Queerness in the diaspora remains a complicated intersection, largely a result of the history of colonialism and imposed ideas of heteronormativity and masculinity through religion and British imperialism.
This year, on August 6, as part of Artscape’s Summer Series, Blockobana is back and as queer as ever. International DJ/producer Osunlade returns to Toronto to headline the one-day festival with his signature soulful house and afrobeat sound.
The party has moved from Barbara Hall Park to Regent Park’s “Big Park” beginning at noon and features local legends Blackcat, Nik Red, yours truly, and many more, spinning soulful house, dancehall, afrobeat, R&B, hip hop, and soca.
