Closing out Pride Month, this weekend on Saturday, June 26, Black millennial married couple Tre’von “Tre G,” Griffith and Shelton Boyd-Griffith will host their second annual WerQfest Music and Arts Festival at the City Foundry.
The pair launched the festival to provide St. Louis’ Black queer, non-binary, and trans community with a platform to unapologetically to be themselves and showcase some of the best local artists and talent that fit under that umbrella.
“We came up with the idea because with me being an artist I’ve always had a dream of creating a safe space to be myself and I wanted the same for queer artists,” Griffith said. “I wanted us to be able to express ourselves and literally just be.”
With last year’s coronavirus pandemic, the couple was forced to hold their first event virtually on Twitch. To their surprise, the inaugural event showcase was met with great success despite not being able to meet in person.
We put it together in a matter of two weeks and this took place while the pandemic was going on, different things were happening in the Black queer community, and there were a lot of Black trans women getting killed,” Boyd-Griffith said. We were like let’s do something. It left a major impact and a lot of people gravitated toward it.
With much less COVID-19 restrictions and more people becoming vaccinated, Boyd-Griffith and Griffith are able to host their first WerQ Fest in person.
For the evening, Maxi Glamour, a non-binary community activist and national drag star will host the night’s festivity with Tre G, Eric Dontè and Be.Be. headlining the festival on the Main Stage. Other performances include Jay-Marie is Holy, Bynk Bravado, Paige Alyssa, Blanca the Bawdy, and Golliday.
In addition to the live performances on the Main Stage, Leethal The Poet, 6MR J.J. and Ciera Danyel will perform on behalf of Profield Reserve’s activated virtual stage. DJ Kimmy Nu will curate the evening’s soundtrack. Profield Reserve, located at 2309 Cherokee Street will also host merchandise pop-up in conjunction with WerQfest.
This year’s performers were chosen through open submissions and on behalf of the WerQ Fest’s committee’s selection. Griffith said through this process he and the WerQ Fest team received a lot of great submissions and even received some from artists he had never heard of before.
“We hope in the future there can be hundreds of artists to choose from,” Griffith said. “I’m really excited to see everybody return to the stage. For some of these artists, this may be their biggest performance.”
Griffith said it was very much intentional for WerQ Fest to be held during Pride Month. He added that he thinks the night is going to be special for that reason and for the 40th Anniversary of the first case of HIV and AIDS in America, which was on June 5.
““I think it’s gonna be a really powerful and impactful night especially to be able to close out the end of pride month this year which actually marks the 40th anniversary for the first case of HIV and AIDs in America,” Griffith said. There’s so many things to talk about and we’ve come so far, but we literally have 1,000 miles to go. I hope that this is just a conversation starter really to better the community and bridge that gap.”
WerQ Fest is more than just a music showcase, Boyd-Griffith said he and Griffith plan to eventually expand the brand into various such as a web series and public exhibitions.
“The highlight of WerQ Fest now is the festival, but we do have plans to expand into media and by that we mean by making an original webseries that is written, produced and directed by young Black queer creatives in St. Louis,” Boyd-Griffith said. “We also have plans of expanding into curation creating specific public exhibitions of spotlighting Black queer artists in the city. Our goal is to create a holistic component that represents all facades of young Black queer creatives in St. Louis within music, art, and film.
WerQfest will be 7:00-10:00 p.m. at the City Foundry, doors open at 6:00 p.m.
The event is 21+ and up unless accompanied by an adult or guardian.
For more information about WerQfest and to purchase tickets, visit: werqfest.com.
