JANELLE MONÁE to headline CAROLINADAZE!

In Praise of CAROLINADAZE, Small Kindness, and Showing Up at Home with Creative Interventions.

I’m so excited for this amazing concert and so proud of the many folks behind organizing this goodness and showing up here at home in NC.

I’m not a folk singer by accident. I believe in singing as a means of putting love into the world  as relentlessly as I believe in the Southern swing state where I grew up. I am a storyteller to keep hearts open and imagine a world better than the one we are standing in.  

With so much anxiety in the air around upcoming elections, and even more questions about how these contests connect to everyday people’s lives, I believe relentless optimism is needed more than ever. There is no better antidote to doom-scrolling than showing up human to human. Now is a perfect time to make a plan to get involved where you live!

And when you look into how you might engage in a way that is meaningful to you will find two, ten, a hundred, a thousand people working out in the world doing phenomenally good, optimistic and beautiful things. The spectacular news is that there are circles upon circles of people in the world asking questions in their hometown, nationally, globally about how to grow a better world and interrupt the harmful patterns of the past, showing up for where they live no matter no matter what the national headlines read.

With all that in mind, I’m proud to be a founding advisor and co-producer for the upcoming CAROLINADAZE Music & Arts Festivals, on Saturday, September 14, at downtown Raleigh’s Red Hat Amphitheater.

Our goal with CAROLINADAZE is to bring together artists, advocates, and audiences disillusioned with politics as usual but who are also primed to live into this Festival’s mission: ‘celebrate our culture, collaborate across communities, and commit to all the ways we can bring better days ahead.’

Unlike other music festivals you may have attended in the past, CAROLINADAZE is a concert series designed to meet this particular moment. Each event will reflect its people, promising an experience “of, by, and for young North Carolinians”that melds next-generation music and movement-building in unique ways. 

Powered by nonpartisan nonprofit Common Cause North Carolina, CAROLINADAZE will feature pioneering social justice leaders on stage amid an eclectic mix of artists.  This will be combined with off-stage offerings personalized to the needs of young attendees, coined “Carolinadazies,” who may have wanted to become more engaged, but who didn’t previously know how.

Every decision — from the all-star musical lineup to the featured vendors to the grassroots organizations each concert series will benefit — has been lovingly made by young people and with young people in mind and at heart. 

Each event is intended to strike a different chord, connecting to what’s motivating new and infrequent voters in different regions of the state at this pivotal moment for our democracy. But every event is also a love letter to North Carolina, encouraging attendees to show up for themselves and their home. 

Showing up for our peers, our community, our home is really what CAROLINADAZE is all about.    I’ve looked around a lot of strategies for navigating this very intense moment — to find ways to stay positive, to ask questions about effective individual advocacy and to remind myself that envisioning a better world is an important part of bringing that world into being. Nobody can do everything or even take in everything right now.  But showing up at home where you can affect change is meaningful, grounding, works for positive change and puts a little love back into the world.

HOW CAN CREATIVES SHOW UP AT HOME?  If you want to use your voice, the Kerry Washington Foundation helpfully prescribes some meaningful ways.

• USE YOUR PLATFORM. Talk about it, baby. Speak from your values. 

• WORK WITH VOTERS. If you’re gathering people, check their registration, get them registered, energize the crowd for the next election. 

• GET INVOLVED IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Partner with organizations to do a concert, write a song, phone bank, give a community member a place to talk about how issues affect them from your stage.  

• REPEAT. 

Whether you’re an artist or activist or just interested in taking it all in from the audience, now is the perfect time to put that vision into practice. And, like North Carolina itself, CAROLINADAZE may be the perfect place for it. 

CAROLINADAZE is a one-stop shop for all of it, at the lowest of costs. Another goal of CAROLINADAZE was making a music festival — full of memorable performers enjoying millions of listens on popular streaming services each month — more affordable to the state’s youngest audiences. To make discounted tickets and other incentives possible, Common Cause North Carolina sought support from an array of advisors and sponsors who wholly embraced an event series that they believe can infuse much-needed energy into youth engagement in the Tar Heel State. 

Elections here are decided by hundreds of votes, not thousands. Everything matters, including your vote.  CAROLINADAZE is here to remind you that showing up for your home now — from concert seats to voting sites to celebrating NC — can only mean better days ahead.

PS Gino Nuzzolillo and Victoria Roe, you are my heroes. Love t