ODUNDE Festival Is Back (June 5-1 1th) celebrating 48 years

PHILADELPHIA, Mayor Jim Kenney, the CEO of the ODUNDE, Oshunbumi FernandezWest, Philadelphia leaders, stakeholders, and students from ODUNDE365 Entrepreneurship Program, and the Universal Alcorn Charter School gathered at City Hall on Tuesday, March 30, 2023, to announce this years ODUNDE festival.

- Breina Burnett

The Universal African Dance and Drum Ensemble dancers and drummers shared a sneak peek of the African movement and beats that will be performed at the ODUNDE Festival. There will be a variety of events starting with the Beautiful Unique Magnificent Individuals (I AM B.U.M.I) 25th-anniversary celebration.

The city of brotherly love and sisterly affection will have an eventful month this June. The ODUNDE Festival will arrive on June 5, celebrating its 48th anniversary of African Americans and Africanized people around the world. Every year the festival does not fail to attract over five hundred thousand people not only in Philadelphia; but across the country.

Here's something interesting and true. Have you ever heard of the ODUNDE Festival? Neither did I until I started researching this article. Well, ODUNDE, which means Happy New Year, originally started from the Yoruba people of Nigeria, West Africa, and celebrates the coming of another year for African Americans and Africanized people around the globe. Today, people of African descent still celebrate the joy of being born into the African culture at the ODUNDE Festival. The ODUNDE festival is to praise the Goddess of Yoruba, and every year there is a proposal at 23rd and South Street to the Schuylkill River of fruits and flowers made to Oshun, the Yoruba goddess of the river.