Power & Respect: free Black women-led music festival in Stratford this July

There’s a particular kind of festival that gets the curation right by just handing the keys over entirely, and Power & Respect is exactly that. It’s the second weekend of East Bank’s Music Is Black Festival, it lands at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on 11 and 12 July, and it’s completely free. No tickets, no faff, just turn up.

Jamz Supernova takes curatorial duties on the Saturday, with Yazmin Lacey, TYSON and BORN N BREAD handing over the reins on the Sunday. The whole weekend is built around celebrating Black women’s and non-binary people’s contribution to British music, both on stage and in all the unglamorous infrastructure that actually makes a music scene work, and the lineup backs that up properly rather than treating it as a box-ticking exercise.

Saturday’s Waterfront Stage has Lava La Rue, Terri Walker and the Cassie Kinoshi Quartet, while Mid Terrace marks 25 years of Cooly G alongside sets from DJ Flight and Smokin Jo. Sunday brings Sheila Maurice-Grey from Kokoroko, a set from BORN N BREAD themselves, and two competition winners getting their moment on a proper stage, which we think is a lovely touch.

The Dance Floor is Black

Then there’s the bit that really got our attention. Sadler’s Wells East becomes the festival’s third venue for The Dance Floor Is Black, and tucked into the daytime programme is a Q&A on the female pioneers of reggae, hosted with Hackney Showroom and the Museum of Youth Culture, featuring Lovers Rock icon Carroll Thompson. We love a festival that remembers the people who built the genre, not just the people headlining it now.

Power & Respect is one of four free weekends running across the summer as part of the wider Music Is Black Festival, which also anchors a properly good exhibition at V&A East Museum, The Music Is Black: A British Story, running until January 2027. If you haven’t made the trip out to Stratford Waterfront yet, this is a good excuse.

The London x London Take: This is free festival programming done right, with real depth behind the names rather than just a poster that looks good. Sheila Maurice-Grey alone is worth the journey, and the reggae pioneers panel is the kind of thing you genuinely won’t see programmed with this much care anywhere else in London this summer.