Every year for the last two decades, Angelenos have looked forward to Taste of Soul, a street festival held on nearly 3 miles of Crenshaw Boulevard in South LA.
This outdoor event has grown to welcome approximately 300,000 people and has generated more than $100 million for the local economy, according to its founders, all while remaining free to the public. Taste of Soul regularly includes musical performances and gives small businesses a chance to showcase their unique flavors to festival-goers.
The festival was founded in 2005 by Danny J. Bakewell Sr., civil rights activist and businessman. His son, Danny Bakewell Jr., helps manage the festival behind the scenes. The event is usually held on the third Saturday of October and is one of deep pride to the community, the younger Bakewell said, and has gained its place as an important and commemorative event for LA’s Black community.
“Taste of Soul really is a pride thing,” Bakewell said. “Something that our community can truly be proud of calling it our own.”
Student journalist Lakshmi Leon interviewed Danny Bakewell Jr. about how Taste of Soul has evolved, what it means to the community and what we can expect in the future.
The interview has been edited for space and clarity.
The LA Local: How did you land on the name “Taste of Soul” for your event and what was the intention behind it?
Danny Bakewell Jr.: Everybody seems to have a taste. There’s Taste of Inglewood. There’s Taste of Monrovia. There’s Taste of Pasadena. My dad, who was the founder and creator of Taste of Soul, was like, “What do we have in our community? What do we have where we can celebrate us, our culture, our food?” People always talk about Creole cuisine or Soul food or all those things, but there really was never a festival to celebrate African American culture and history here in Los Angeles. And so we really thought, “Hey, you know what? We can do it. We can do it in our community and give our community something that they can really enjoy and celebrate.” And it’s been that way for the last 21 years.
LAL: You mentioned that the festival has been going on for 21 years. What are some of the biggest impacts that come to mind when you think about it?
DBJ: We know for a fact that economically, it does about $2 to $3 million a year of business for the 400 plus vendors that participate in Taste of Soul. The amount of dollars and economic impact that it has within our community is huge. It creates a lot of jobs and we try to use our local businesses to promote it. Over the last 20 years, we’ve had well over $100 million of economic impact being dollars spent and invested right here in South Los Angeles.
LAL: How has the event grown over the years and how has it adapted?
DBJ: For the first five years, the event went only from Obama (Boulevard) to Martin Luther King (Boulevard) . And then after about five or six years, it got to be so popular I could feel the pressure of just hosting a lot of people, so we expanded it from King (Boulevard) to Stocker (Street) . So we pushed it out a little further. We had always anchored it with two stages, but we added a third stage at King, which is our gospel stage. Our staff, who do an incredible job, are always coming up with new ideas. We have Kids’ World that Disney and a lot of other people are involved in. We have more experiences and we have more vendors. And so it just continuously grows. It’s always changing. It’s always evolving. Our staff works really hard to give our community the absolute best event we think in the state of California, let alone the city of Los Angeles.
LAL: Why is it important to you to organize an event that is accessible to every family, regardless of their ability to spend money?
DBJ: The important thing is that it is a free festival, completely. You can spend the money that you want and have, but you can come and have a really good time and spend no money. You can go and listen to Atlantic Starr on the Bakewell Media stage, or for years you could’ve seen Stevie Wonder at the KJLH stage or Karen Clark Sheard, who’s a big gospel singer, at the gospel stage. You can have health screenings and breast cancer screenings. You can get a TAP card and learn how to take the Metro around and see where the Metro routes go. We have all of these things, and it’s all free to just celebrate our community.
LAL: Watching this event change and grow over 21 years, what’s surprised you the most?
DBJ: I think what has surprised me the most is the amount of joy that people in our community get from it. The community embraces this thing. They love it, and that’s what I hear all the time. They take great pride in it. And we get people from all over the country of every race, religion, creed, culture. It’s all there. But at the end of the day, Taste of Soul really is a pride thing. It is something that our community can truly be proud of calling our own. You can get on the 10 freeway and you can ride all the way to Pomona to the LA County Fair, but you can also go right around the corner and be right there on Crenshaw.
LAL: What are some resources that you think are the most important to offer to the community in Inglewood and South LA?
DBJ: We build out this big pavilion, and then all of the [County] departments within the pavilion have space. So from foster care programs to employment to sanitation, if you’re looking for a job, if you want to get your record expunged, if you’re looking for whatever it is that the county offers, you can generally go to that area. Wells Fargo, Chase, BMO, Bank of America, they’re all participating. They do everything from financial literacy to the importance of wealth planning.
We have messages from community-based organizations like Urban League and Cynthia Mitchell Heard telling them about it and welcoming people. We have elected officials who are telling people to make sure you register to vote or the importance of voting in this election, all of those things. So we really are a one-stop shop of community awareness, of community involvement, and community participation.
LAL: How else is Taste of Soul unique to the South LA community?
DBJ: The thing that stands out is that it’s our festival right here in our community. So if you think about things that go on in our community like a concert or a sporting event, they’re usually at a cost, or they’re very small in size, or somebody else is throwing it in our community, but we’re not involved. This one, it’s led by an African American leadership team. We open it to everybody. Our vendors are homegrown. They take pride in what they’re doing and how they do it. The great part about it is that it’s our festival in our community. We’re not going to take it somewhere else and you get a sense of community that you don’t get from a lot of things in South LA.
LAL: What is something about the festival you’d never want to lose or change as it grows?
DBJ: I never want it to get so big that it doesn’t have that personal touch, that it doesn’t feel like a family reunion. No matter how big the family reunion is or whether you know every family member or not, it’s a sense of pride of getting together with your family, and that’s really what Taste of Soul is. It is an undertaking of bringing all of these families together.
LAL: Looking forward, what can people expect from Taste of Soul in 2027 and beyond?
DBJ: In every Taste of Soul, the first thing you can expect is a good time. You know that’s number one. It is a celebration of our rich culture and tradition, and we will continue to do that. It’ll always evolve. Stages will get bigger, stages will get smaller, but the amount of people who come and enjoy it — that has been the beauty of it. You know, my dad can’t go anywhere where they don’t say, “Thank you for Taste of Soul. Thank you for bringing this to our community. Thank you for giving us this or that.” That is the beauty of it.
