Denver’s City Park will host the 12th annual Taste of Ethiopia festival this weekend, a free two-day celebration of Ethiopian food, art, music and fashion. The event is scheduled for the City Park Pavilion at 2001 Steele St. and is organized by the Ethiopian Heritage Foundation, according to the foundation. The festival marks Enkutatash, the Ethiopian New Year, while bringing cultural programming and community resources to the park.
The festival has drawn more than 15,000 attendees in past years, according to the Ethiopian Heritage Foundation. That historical figure does not establish the size of this year’s crowd.
A different setup for live performances
Live music will continue despite the March destruction of City Park’s historic bandstand. Axios reported that co-founder and organizer Nebiyu Asfaw said organizers worked with the city to arrange a standalone stage for the festival. The workaround addresses the loss of the park’s traditional performance venue, which had been damaged in an overnight fire, as previously reported by Hoodline.
The bandstand’s history predates the festival by more than a century. It was first built in 1896, replaced in 1924 and reconstructed as a replica in 1984, according to CBS Colorado. The Denver Fire Department later classified the cause of the March blaze as undetermined after testing and examination produced no conclusive explanation.
From a school gathering to a larger annual event
The foundation says the festival began in 2013 at Laredo Elementary School in Aurora. It later moved through larger venues, including Parkfield Lake Park, as attendance increased before arriving at Denver’s City Park. Organizers have said early editions ran out of food after unexpectedly large crowds, prompting the search for additional space, according to the foundation’s history.
Nebiyu Asfaw, identified by the foundation and Axios as a co-founder and organizer, has helped lead that expansion. The Ethiopian Heritage Foundation describes its work as extending beyond the festival to cultural preservation, civic empowerment and health equity, while the annual event provides a public setting for Ethiopian food, music and traditions.
A celebration tied to the Ethiopian New Year
The festival’s timing coincides with Enkutatash, which falls on Sept. 11 this year. The holiday marks the end of Ethiopia’s rainy season and is associated with the blooming of yellow Adey Abeba daisies in the country’s highlands, according to K24 Digital. Its name is translated as “gift of jewels” in Amharic and is linked to a legend about the Queen of Sheba’s return from Jerusalem.
Enkutatash arrives under Ethiopia’s 13-month calendar: 12 months of 30 days followed by the shorter month of Pagume. The calendar places the Ethiopian year roughly seven to eight years behind the Gregorian calendar, so this year’s holiday begins 2019, according to Pulse of Africa.
