Something in the Water music festival coming to D.C. in June

WASHINGTON — Major music festivals in D.C. are often held on the outskirts of the city, but Pharrell Williams is looking to change that when he brings the three-day Something in the Water festival to the downtown streets of the nation’s capital over Juneteenth weekend.

According to an announcement earlier this week, the festival, which was first held in April 2019 in Williams’s hometown of Virginia Beach, will be held June 17-19 on three stages “directly on Independence Avenue and its adjacent streets.” (Details about specific locations were not immediately available.)

“This is very special. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my community,” Williams said in a phone interview. “I’m from the 757 [the area code for Virginia Beach and the Tidewater region] in Virginia Beach. Obviously, that’s one-third of the whole, entire DMV. There’s always been so much special energy around the DMV. The way that we love each other. ... I just think it’s high time that we take our movement and everything we’re doing to our nation’s capital and really celebrate everything that Something in the Water is.”

The initial lineup includes an eclectic mix of artists, including Virginia natives Dave Matthews Band and Pusha T alongside the likes of Tyler, the Creator and Usher. For Williams, trying to put together a mix of genres came naturally. The 49-year-old has constructed his legacy as one of the most influential architects of modern pop music through his wide-ranging and curious ear.

“The spectrum of the artists that we have is a direct reflection of growing up being a child of the DMV and Virginia,” Williams said. “It felt very separate. It didn’t really feel like the powers that be, that were sort of the gatekeepers at the time, really understood the power of diversity, the power of inclusion and the power of equity.

“Why do I need to look a certain way to listen to something? Or why do I need to talk or have a certain accent because I like this particular music act from a completely different genre than what you would expect? We just want to be loyal to that. Don’t try to put us in a box; we got enough of that.”

There was one easy source of inspiration for Williams when he was deciding who to book for the festival: D.C. itself. Pioneering go-go bands Backyard Band, Rare Essence and Sound of the City were announced as scheduled performers.

“You think of a place like the 9:30 Club where they would have Bad Brains playing at one point and then Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers playing,” Williams said. “It’s places that house all that sound; how do you not have some of that on the lineup?

“D.C. really was a major contributor to early rap music. Rock the Bells ... you know, ask [producer] Teddy Riley where would he be and where would his sound be [without D.C.] — the new jack swing was just sped-up go-go. So you got to understand that go-go music is one of the founding pillars of rap music, period.”

The festival, which was not held in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic, started out as a love letter to Williams’s hometown. But he said in October 2021 he would no longer host the festival in the Tidewater region following Virginia Beach’s response to the police killing of his cousin Donovan Lynch in 2021, citing the “toxic energy” he found when talking with city officials, particularly Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer.

Dyer “said things that really hurt my feelings, and that’s just because his conversation with me was culturally tone-deaf,” Williams said. “There were the right words to say and the right way to handle it, and I don’t think that’s how he conducted himself. My cousin volunteered in the festival, and then the festival comes up and I’m like, I can’t believe that this is even a part of the conversation, and in my mind I’m like, ‘Man, you are worried about the loss of this festival.’ ... When you signal to me that the loss of the festival — something that you didn’t want in the very beginning — is more important than the loss of my cousin’s life, I don’t know how to help you.”

The choice of Juneteenth weekend was important to Williams since Something in the Water will have community events to support Black- and Latinx-owned businesses as well as a partnership with D.C. Public Schools. But Williams is focused on getting everyone involved in fostering community in the Washington region, just as it was intended for Virginia Beach.

“We made a festival for human beings,” Williams said. “No matter what color, what way that you identify yourself. If you have blood in your body, a brain in your head and a heart in your chest, you are welcome to Something in the Water, and everybody felt that love? That’s what it was about.”

Tickets for Something in the Water go on sale April 30 at 10 a.m. at somethinginthewater.com.