Join the Family This Juneteenth: In Conversation with Soul of the Southside’s Fancy Lanier-Duncan
By Angel Adaeze
Clear your calendars and join the family Thursday, June 19th 2025 for a Juneteenth celebration like no other! The Soul of the Southside Festival, born from the Legacy Building's 2022 grand opening, has swiftly become a transformative community gathering in Minneapolis’ Southside.
Driven by the vision of Fancy Lanier-Duncan and Emmanuel Duncan, the husband-and-wife duo behind the hip-hop duo act iLLism, the Legacy Building was established to become one of Minnesota's most significant Black-led creative spaces.
Now entering its fourth year, this festival has swelled beyond a single venue and now claims the bustling intersection of Minnehaha Ave and E Lake St. This year’s theme: "Family a Revolutionary Act," prepares audiences for an infusion of Black centered, innovative, family-centered experiences. Soul of the Southside is more than just a festival; it's a living testament to Blackness, creativity, and pure joy.
via Soul of the Southside website
Juneteenth, June 19th, originates back in 1865 when over 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, delivering news that the remaining 250,000 enslaved Black people were free by executive decree, over two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Early celebrations in Texas in 1866, involving prayer and spirituals, spread across the nation as Black communities migrated. After gaining recognition as a state holiday in Texas in 1980, Juneteenth became a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, serving today as a powerful observance of freedom, resilience, and the ongoing pursuit of equality and justice through gatherings, reflection, and education (NMAAHC).
iLLism, via Spotify
Here, Co-founder Fancy Lanier-Duncan shares how Soul of the Southside’s meteoric evolution, impact of Black-centered spaces, the robust East Lake Street community, and reflections on their transformative experience in The Great Northern Festival Producer Incubator Cohort.
Angel Adaeze: I’m so excited to get to talk to you! Every year, the festival is all over my socials. Can you share how the festival came to be, the founding vision and what sparked the idea?
Fancy Lanier-Duncan: Yes, that means you’re tapped in! We launched [the Legacy Building] in 2022, and as part of our grand opening, (which was very intentionally planned on Juneteenth of 2022), we wanted to have a celebration. Part[ly] honoring our grand opening, but also, we wanted to showcase what our building would eventually be, which is Blackness, like Black creativity and utilizing our creativity as a force of justice, as a force of our liberation.
The festival took place only at the Hook and Ladder, and we actually didn't even call it a festival. We just were like, 'We want to host a Juneteenth event and celebrate our grand opening at the same time.'
The folks at Hook and Ladder, Chris Mozena, the executive director over there, I called him up and he had mentioned that they had done a Juneteenth event the year before, but that it didn't look like that event was coming back for a second year so we could utilize their space. And it was great. We had maybe about a 1,000 people, or so, show up and we had maybe six or seven performances. We had only one visual art thing, artist seangarrison came out and did a live painting during the day. We had like six or seven different vendors and it was really great.
Then maybe October, November, following that particular June, I got a call from Chris at the Hook and was like, "Yeah, so can you start sending over the graphics for Soul of the Southside 2023?" And I was like, "Wait, there was no intention to ever do that!" [laughs] Even though me and Emanuel, my husband, and he's my partner in all of this, we've always wanted our own festival. We always wanted it for the benefit of the music and creative community, but also just a driving force behind our own music career.
So here we are at year four. All of the different community members, whether they are musicians or visual artists or just nonprofits or organizations, reach out and share their experiences. But just, you know, "Are you doing it again? Are you doing it again? I hope that you're going to do it again." It's the feedback that we are always getting every year.
AA: How have you seen it expand and also for this upcoming festival, what are some things that are now able to happen that couldn’t previously because of the growth?
FLD: We’re taking up a lot more space. We went from just being at the Hook and Ladder and then in 2023 we took up all of Minnehaha Avenue, from Arbiter Brewing all the way down to the Hook and Ladder, it's kind of like a four or five business stretch, but it's just one block total. In 2024, we started closing down streets because inside a lot of the venues were packed, shoulder to shoulder.
Another way that we've grown: our partners, our collaborators. The Coliseum got added last year. Their space is a historic space that did endure fire damage during the uprisings of George Floyd five years ago and they completely renovated that entire space. Last year, they held their grand opening alongside the festival. We were finally able to get a full exhibition in their space and it'll return this year as well. An actual art exhibition and not just art vendors or live painting, but being able to showcase multiple visual artists was a big goal of ours.
We have two markets, our vending market and then our art market. Our city has gone under a lot of changes when it comes to visual art and supporting local artists. And that was the loss of several of our really well-loved art fairs. The Southside We Outside Art Market and Fair was added in 2023 and it was small, five or six vendors. We've now expanded to 15 art vendors. In 2022, our regular vending we had six or seven and now we have 30.
Very specific are our leadership in vending and in the arts. Esther Callahan is the art market. And then there's another Esther [Lanier]. Surprisingly enough we have two Esthers who deal with our market vendors [laughs]. They do a great, great job curating and really choosing individuals and businesses with products that are going to make for a really great shopping experience for our attendees. Most of our vendors sell out almost every year, about 90% of them. It's about commerce as well. We want to put money in the hands of Black people. Outside of infrastructure costs, I would say about 80% of our payout is to Black people. Whether it's bands, artists, paying vendors for hospitality, or things like that. Our staff is all Black led. We are very, very intentional about working with Black led service providers, groups, individuals, organizations.
Remembering that Soul of the Southside is an ecosystem. If anyone's going to do anything for us, it's going to be us. Black people support Black people the most. It's a place that people come to find out the tea and what's happening in the community. Black folks have moved away from being able to organize and we get highways thrown in the middle of our communities and big buildings and they flood our communities with lakes. And this has been happening for hundreds of years. Then when groups get organized, like the Panthers, it's seen as a threat.
The festival truly is a place for people to gather, but it looks like a party. It's [actually] knowing who is in the community, taking that home with you and saying, if I need something for my family or I need to find something, I remember I got this resource or I met this individual or I had this experience. I got this educational thing. If anything, the festival has to grow that way, continuing to be a resource for our community, for our people and if we can do it while it looks like we're partying and having a good time, even better.
AA: I love that because both things can be true. It's being fed some medicine that's got a lot of sugar on it. But also just convening in itself is so healing. That's so beautiful. The theme of this year is "Family, a Revolutionary Act." Can you tell me about the choosing of that theme and how it is permeating through the festival this year?
FLD: Thank you. A lot of the feedback that we got from our community was, "Where's all the family stuff?" Not that we didn't have family things, but it wasn't enough where there could be activities where the whole family could do it together. How else can we get more family centered activities where the cousins, uncles and aunties, and all of them can show up and we can sit down and we can eat meals together? It seems so small, but it's actually so important for Black folks. We ain't trying to sit on the ground, put the food on the float. That's not what we do.
We also are introducing “Don't Shoot Guns, Shoot Hoops” is another local Black founded organization. Their focus is on youth violence prevention, especially at the hands of guns. They are running a tournament this year. Although there are heats dedicated to age groups, we also have one dedicated to family. So families can sign up and play sports and compete together. You know, Black folks, we love that. Like a big family reunion, trying to bring that vibe very intentionally.
We also have a lot more art making. We're collaborating with different arts organizations in the Twin Cities to bring art making into the festival this year. One specifically is the ‘Create Light. Carry Legacy’, a lantern making workshop [by the Semilla Center]. Something that families can do together. We also have a quilting project too. Quilting was a big part of our ways to freedom and our storytelling as well. You can make your own and you can either contribute to the overall large quilts that will be put on display, or you can piece it together with your family members and bring it home.
We also have financial literacy for family planning and long term financial resource education. I think sometimes Black folks, we aren't really sure where to go for that either. And what does that look like? Some of us really are well versed in that. So we want to have those people that look like us who are already successful at doing it, handing over the keys.
AA: Around the Festival Producer Incubator Cohort, how has that experience been for you? What have you learned? How has it helped you shape this year's festival?
FLD: The festival cohort has been a great experience. I'm really lucky that my mentor is someone that's also working on our team and Esther Callahan is absolutely incredible. Love, love, love working with her.
As far as the cohort goes, it has been great to be able to first off hear and listen to some of what the other folks and their planning and what they're going through and being able to be a resource but then also being able to hear what's working for people and being able to apply or even just hearing the ideas and, "Oh, I never looked at it that way," or, "Thought about integrating that," or, "Wow, that is definitely a work smarter, not harder concept right there”.
I also think that it has also opened a door for just new connections to people. Gatekeeping is real in this state. I don't know if, as a transplant, you realize how siloed individuals are, but the gatekeeping is real. A setting like this — it feels good to give resource away, it feels good to share and to provide feedback because we want to see all of us be successful, whether we're a mentor or a producer. I would say it's been very, very valuable. I do hope that this is something that can be ongoing and not necessarily just as a project organized through DEED and Lake Street Lift and the Great Northern, but that us as a group can continue to be a resource for each other and stay in community, because the events are going to continue. Soul of the Southside is going to continue. Y'all [The Great Northern] are continuing, Mayday, been around for 40 years! How are we going to remain aligned and at the end of this, not just be like, "Well, that was fun"?
AA: So thinking back about how there's such a call from the community and that it's such a staple, how do you think it's further contributed to the character or the identity of Lake Street and the influence between the two and what do you hope they walk away feeling?
FLD: You know, a lot of people think about that corridor now and they think about sadness. They think about, even though George Floyd did not die there, the person who murdered him worked out of that space. And personally, I grew up a block away from there. We have since moved back and taken over my childhood home for my parents because they're too old to take care of that house. What I can say, even just as a kid growing up, it was a lot of joy in that neighborhood. We ran all around them streets. That's my hood.
A friend of ours came to visit and he asked, "What is Minneapolis like now? Post George Floyd?" And I actually didn't have an answer for him. I do now. I feel like, (and this has probably been this way for a long time, but it has now come into just my existence now) there’s often this thing where they want us to come together because something bad has happened. And even now with the festival (where it takes place at) we get a lot of calls of, "Hey, do you want to comment on it being the fifth year of George Floyd and what that means for your community?" And really the only comment that really even now still sits with us, and it's hopefully a reflection of the community and what the festival means to the community, is that it's a time for joy. It's a time for the community to get together. It's a time for folks to know that art truly is a way through to our liberation. For Black people especially, it's our creativity that our resilience stands on. I mean, I often reflect on who survived so that I could be here. And when I think about that, I feel like all of those individuals that were required to get me here want to center joy at the heart of it. Out of all the negative things that have happened to them, that they've watched happen to their families, and the people that they love and they care about, at the end of it, what happens if we could just get together and just love on each other and just have joy.
Just last year there were two young men standing in front of the third precinct and they were like, "Man, Juneteenth right here. And it's nothing but Black people. Like it's the Blackest sh-t I've seen ever in Minnesota. And we're doing it right here in this spot." And they felt so, so seen. And that's what fills me with joy. The post event surveys and all that, yeah they do give us a really good scope. But honestly, walking around and just hearing the conversations and looking at the pictures, it's just smiles.
AA: I love to hear that. I think there is typically an expectation, to your point, for trauma and pain to be at the forefront or the driving force. Joy for joy's sake is also so powerful and healing and doesn't usually get revered for how important that is.
FLD: Right? And we do make space for grieving. We have a whole somatic grieving space. We have wellness too, yoga and the movement to get that tension up out of our hips and out of our bodies because that's important too. To know that there is a resource of mostly Black women that are in our wellness space who are offering a place for healing intentionally for our people. Even the somatic healing experiences are derived or directed to Black women or, you know, femme identifying individuals. I hope the community feels joy because it's [the festival] centered around our joy.
Don’t miss the Soul of the Southside Juneteenth Festival, June 19th at the corner of Minnehaha Ave and East Lake Street from 12pm to 8pm. The festival is free to attend.
Learn more about the event schedule, mapping, and how to access free metro passes on the Soul of the Southside’s website.
Learn more about the Festival Producer’s Incubator Cohort, here.
The Great Northern Festival Incubator Program is made possible by funding from DEED and the City of Minneapolis.
Lake Street Lift projects were made possible by funding from DEED and the City of Minneapolis.
