Why Frēichella Festival Now?

Frēichella’s One-deful Black Experience Festival & Birthday Celebration was birth out of need to create more space for Frēi to celebrate who she is now and in the future. As parents, even in Coronavirus lock down, we searched for ways to authentically celebrate a little black girl, yet as new parents we found ourselves empty handed. I mean we went through watermelon themes, wild jungle themes (side eye), Disney princesses, ice cream and sweets with all of them failing to capture my black child’s experience and truly represent her.

But after talking to one of my friends and my SIL, they gave me the idea of recreating Coachella’s music and arts festival for Frēi. I’ve never been to Coachella but have heard it is a music and arts festival full of affluent white kids. However, after watching Beyonce’s “Homecoming” documentary on Netflix, I quickly saw that she had created space for blackness to exist even within Coachella’s predominantly white art festival. So after all of the Pinterest and Party City fails, I took a page from Queen Bey and began to work on creating our baby her own celebration that fully represents her with all her love of soul food, trap music, bare feet and loud talking.

As parents, we all want to celebrate our kids. But now, more than ever, as black parents, we want to lift them up even more. So to our little Frei as she turns one, Frēichella is our way to tell her that her being is not a crime, her slang is not wrong, her community is not negatively ghetto, her skin is not ugly. Her blackness is a one-derful experience that must be celebrated everyday and that is why we are celebrating her first year of life as a testament to that end with Frēichella! So in the words of Queen Bey, ” Now let’s get in formation” .