Festival founder Catherine T. Morris , who serves as director of arts and creativity for the Boston Foundation, said in a phone interview that the Momentum series will allow the festival’s organizers, participants, and attendees “to center and collaborate more than we ever have.” With the scope of BAMS expanded beyond Franklin Park, people will “get to cross neighborhood lines, experience the diversity, get to be in spaces that they maybe didn’t know existed,” she said.
This summer, Boston Art & Music Soul (BAMS) Fest will put on its largest-scale event to date, hosting several free and ticketed events around the Boston area during the week surrounding its usual summer festival in Franklin Park. Those events, which include concerts, a fashion showcase, a film screening, and a beat battle competition, will all take place under the umbrella of a series called Momentum.
Venues for Momentum events announced so far include the Sinclair in Cambridge, where a showcase of eight local musical acts will take place on June 25; the Emerson College UnCommon Stage at the corner of Tremont and Boylston St. for a gathering including DJs, live music, and karaoke on June 26; and Dorchester bookstore JustBook-Ish for a poetry slam on June 29. The centerpiece festival, on June 28, will be headlined by R&B singer-songwriter Lalah Hathaway, North Carolina hip-hop duo Little Brother, and Durand Bernarr, whose album “En Route” received a nomination for best progressive R&B album at the 2025 Grammy Awards. Local acts on the bill include DJ Bruno, Amanda Shea, and Jireh Calo.
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Morris, who described herself as the child of “four or five” generations of Bostonians, said she doesn’t often hear the word “soul” associated with the city. “I’ve heard unique, I’ve heard interesting … I’ve heard boring,” she said with a laugh. “We don’t have that kind of cool factor that other comparable cities have … those words that would draw people or even keep people here.”
But with BAMS, the Afro-centric arts organization she founded in 2015, she’s on a mission to change that. “There’s a lot of work to do, and this festival, coupled with Momentum, we believe … will start to allow words like soul, and cool, and fun, to truly be associated with our city.”
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From the time of the festival’s inception, the goal was always to become large enough to cover Franklin Park’s Playstead Field and “eventually include other parts of the park, so that folks can really experience this green space that sits in the heart of our community,” Morris said. However, the idea for Momentum was born out of “recognizing that Boston was still not being taken seriously as a creative hub and a cultural destination,” and a desire on the part of BAMS and its local partners, which include Berklee College of Music, the Female DJ Association, and Bogosplit, to “shed light on what Boston does.”
The goal of Momentum is to “expand the opportunities of discovery,” discovering new art, new friendships, and “being able to truly be in a place of belonging and vulnerability, but also be able to build camaraderie amongst each other,” Morris said. “We’re trying to break down those barriers and walls.”
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.