It was December 2019, and the Los Angeles-based photographer had just touched down in Accra, Ghana, for the first time. What she found hardly resembled L.A., but after being raised in a Jamaican family and taking frequent trips to the island, the atmosphere in Accra couldn’t have felt more natural.
“The connection between Jamaica and Ghana is so loud and proud — I absolutely love it,” Williams said. “Online, we have all the diaspora wars, but once you touch land, none of that.”
Williams had flown in for the music festival then known as Afrochella after scenes from the 2018 concert caught her eye from a friend’s Instagram page. Earlier that year, she had sworn off music festivals, turned off by hostile crowds and teenage fans that often made her less than welcome as a Black woman at rap and R&B shows. But the vibrancy of Accra leaped through the screen, convincing her that the atmosphere there would be different.
“At a lot of the rap shows, the audience is not Black,” she said. “But then you go to Ghana, and you see a sea of beautiful Black people, enjoying Black music. Afrochella is one of the only festivals I actually want to go to. Seeing all these African artists in their home countries and their sister countries, it’s amazing.”
Source: msn.com