Community Cultural Celebration and Concert with Baaba Maal

Join us at the 9th Annual Afrik Impact Community Cultural Celebration and Concert featuring Baaba Maal!

The Afrik Impact Community Cultural Celebration is a FREE event being held on the Front Plaza from 3 - 5:30 PM. Filled with food trucks, artists, poets, jewelry, clothing, and more!

Show up whenever and stay for Baaba Maal's concert in the Outdoor Ampitheatre with special guests the Ethiopian Youth Dancers of Colorado. A ticket is required to attend the concert

Art is a rich expression of community, identity and culture - a way for all of us to share our stories and our heritage with each other and the world. This Community Celebration and Concert features a community gathering of music, food, fashion and art, followed by a concert with music from Baaba Maal, one of Senegal's most celebrated musicians.

Concert Schedule

Community celebration on the plaza begins at 3:00 pm

Amphitheatre seating starts at 6:30 pm

Performance starts at 7:30 pm

"I never thought I would stay in one place and doing one thing every day in my life. This is why music is a really good opportunity for me to go away, first, like a young person, like going on an adventure..."

- Baaba Maal to NPR about his new album "Being"

Baaba Maal is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. The singer and guitarist belongs to the semi-nomadic Fulani people. He first left his homeland of Fouta, in the river valley region of northern Senegal, almost 40 years ago, to perform music hundreds of miles away as a teenage boy scout and he has been a wanderer ever since. “It’s part of my culture,” he says. “The songs travel from village to village, from country to country. It’s something natural to my tribe and this part of Africa.”

His most recent album The Traveller, which features the British poet Lemn Sissay and members of The Very Best and Mumford and Sons, is both a new direction and a powerful summary of his life’s work: a rich and moving celebration of seeing new places, meeting new people and making new music together. “When you travel you learn things that would have taken you years to learn in one place,” Baaba says. “You learn about the different corners of life.”

The Traveller’s themes of communication, reconciliation and responsibility chime with Baaba’s work as an activist who has campaigned for women’s rights, HIV/AIDS awareness, debt relief, climate issues and education. He is a Youth Emissary for the United Nations Development Program and a global ambassador for Oxfam. For Baaba Maal, music and activism are interwined because they are both about building bridges and encouraging mutual understanding.

African Leadership Group

ALG advocates for the entire African Immigrant Community – across national origin, tribes, and language – to ensure continuous improvement to immigrants’ quality of life. Since its inception, ALG has organized multiple community events, engagements, and discussions with programs focused on key issues, such as education, career and job opportunities, Business Development, Immigration, Political and Community involvement, and many other activities regularly reaching thousands of individuals in the local community.

In 2021, the Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, issued an honorary proclamation establishing the month of August as African Immigrant Month in the state of Colorado. The theme of this year’s celebration is “Connecting Communities, Cultures and Continents.”

Like last year, Afrik Impact 2024 will feature a performance from international recording star Baaba Maal, as well as the attendance of a significant delegation of dignitaries from Senegal.