Dreamland Festival
Greenwood & Archer
November 8-10, 2024
With this year’s Dreamland Festival, Tulsa was again spoiled with the biggest hip-hop festival in the Southwest, with artists and attendees traveling from around the country to attend. Now in its ninth year, the festival delivered on the expectation that this edition would be bigger than the last, adding big-name performers, food and merchandise to its consistently stacked music lineup. On the historic intersection of Greenwood and Archer, vendors lined the streets, showcasing Black Wall Street’s signature entrepreneurship.
But in year nine, Dreamland didn’t just have to be bigger—it had to be more. Organizer Steph Simon gave one word to define that “more”: “partnerships.” That focus on giving space to local platforms upped the game at this Dreamland, making the festival feel like a Summer Jam or a SXSW, with panel discussions and multi-venue community activations that celebrated hip-hop through art, music and film. Simon proved to be the busiest in attendance; his phone rang while he was on stage in one of the panel discussions.
In the first of those partnerships, Tulsa FMAC and the Dreamland film program (named for the historic Williams Dreamland Theatre of Black Wall Street) hosted a Friday night kickoff party complete with a screening of the Luther Vandross documentary Never Too Much. On Saturday afternoon, musical incubator programs Raps 101 and TMC Records took the festival stage, showcasing their best acts to share what these youth-focused curriculums are all about.
Around the corner, Silhouette Sneakers & Art served as a stage for artists who participated in the Groundwaves open mic and mentorship program earlier this year, as well as several from Tempo & Tea, a platform that has created its own community at the Mi Tea Lounge through R&B and soul open mic events. The project “dj noname. & friends” closed out the Silhouette program with a unique set that amplified the immense catalog of work this rapper and producer has created with some of the best artists in Tulsa. Standing in the background like Nick Fury assembling his team of superheroes, he manned the turntables as the group took turns on stage like the Avengers fighting Thanos.