The weekend of July 22-23, Castro Street will be filled with the rhythmic sounds of samba drumming, the rich smells of Filipino and Caribbean food, and the vibrant sights of colorful African fabrics.
The new street festival, which will benefit the Mountain View Library Foundation, is called Culture Fest, and will showcase an array of art, music and cuisine.
“It definitely has an ethnic flavor to it,” said festival organizer and library foundation president Rosiland Bivings.
Musical and dance performances at City Hall Plaza will include Tony Lindsay, Grammy winner and former lead singer of Santana, who lived in Mountain View for 12 years before moving to San Mateo.
He described his music as “R&B with a jazz flavor,” and said it will be hard for audience members to resist dancing during his set on Sunday at 3 p.m.
Also performing on Sunday will be vocalist Anna Maria Flechero at 12:30 p.m., with a combination of original tunes and jazz standards. Her “neo-jazz” will reveal R&B and Latin influences, she said.
“It always feels good when you’re playing for something that you have an interest in and you’re able to be a part of supporting that,” said Flechero, who added she looks forward to helping raise funds for the library through her music.
Saturday’s performances will include local acts, such as Juan’s Latin Potpourri — a dance troupe led by Juan Aranda and featuring salsa, cha-cha, merengue, cumbia and more. He expects from 15 to 40 dancers on Saturday, with a half hour performance and then dancing that will be open to the public.
“There’s a lot of good dancers in town. You’d be surprised,” Aranda said.
Following Aranda and his dancers will be the lively Brazilian drumming group, Sambao Para o Povo. Sambao’s drummers and dancers will wear colorful costumes from their recent performance at San Francisco’s Carnaval. Both Aranda and Sambao offer Wednesday night classes at Rengstorff Community Center and will perform on Saturday between 1 and 3 p.m.
Festival-goers can expect a variety of foods, including Mediterranean, barbecue, Caribbean, and Filipino cuisine. Art vendors will sell “the kind of things you wouldn’t normally see at an Art and Wine festival,” Bivings said. Items will include colorful African attire, dolls, music, books and videos, in addition to other artwork.
Though Culture Fest may bear some resemblance to the controversial Afribbean festival, which was cancelled in 2002 after drawing crowds of 200,000 to Castro Street, Bivings does not want this new street fair to earn the same reputation.
“This is a totally new thing and to support a Mountain View nonprofit,” she said.
Bivings hopes that Culture Fest will bring to Mountain View a taste of the ethnic festivals that occur in other parts of the Bay Area.
“When you get outside of Oakland and San Francisco, you don’t really have ethnically focused festivals. People are excited about having an event like this because unless it’s Cinco de Mayo or Juneteenth, you don’t see real diverse crowds at these events,” she said, adding, “I think it’s time we recognize that we do live in a community that has lots of different kinds of people, and this is one of the ways we can support that.”
