Yoseph Assefa was 13 years old when he realized that sharing his culture was a good way to make friends. This was back in 1995, and he had already spent most of a year in Stillwater, Oklahoma, learning English and navigating a scene that was decidedly different from the one back home. He and his family had moved from Ethiopia so his father, an entomologist and Fulbright scholar, could perform his research at Oklahoma State.
En route to his new home, Assefa landed in Chicago. For a brief, beautiful moment, he believed he was about to be a part of the America he had seen on TV and heard about while scouring the radio for the latest hip hop singles. Stillwater, believe it or not, was proving less than glamorous.
Assefa spent the better part of his first year in the states trying to break into a few of the crews he could tell had a decent reputation. But he found that the music, which had set him apart in Ethiopia, was falling flat. “My whole game was to show people what I was listening to. But the tapes I was rocking were MC Hammer,” he said.
The Walkman crowd was unmoved. Hand-recorded mixes that were so dope in Addis Ababa were no longer social currency for those who had already heard Tupac’s Me Against the World and Mobb Deep’s The Infamous. “Assimilating to this country, especially at that time, was hard,” said Assefa.
This year, Assefa is throwing the sixth iteration of the Denver International Festival. Set for the first time in historic Five Points, the festival will feature around 20 food trucks representing cuisine from all over the map, musical acts, live painting, dedicated bars and drinking areas, and dance performances. Bites from Reggae Pot Jamaican Grill, The Berry Culture, DENCO Smokehouse, Lazo Empanadas and Assefa’s own Konjo Ethiopian Food will all be available throughout the neighborhood. Dances by the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Caitriona Irish Dance and Samba Colorado will be peppered across the daylong, family-friendly event.
Assefa says that the earlier versions of the party, which occurred annually from 2015 to 2019, drew crowds of over 10,000 people. He expects this year’s festivities to bring out at least half of that as the event settles into its new location. This will be the first Denver International Festival since 2022.
With over two decades of party planning and promotion under his belt, Assefa is confident that this year’s event will be the best one yet. Some parts will surely evoke the Fly Magazine Release Parties, the monthly club nights he threw throughout the 2010s that celebrated the latest edition of his then-thriving music and culture publication. Issues covered local fashion and up-and-coming musical acts, and also featured interviews Assefa had done with the likes of J. Cole and Nipsey Hussle.
It’s safe to say Assefa has come a long way from his early musical missteps. But he still remembers what it felt like to realize he had another inroad outside of pop culture. He recalls that at the end of his first year stateside, Oklahoma State’s faculty threw a potluck at the Family Resource Center, an on-campus building that provided guidance for the many students and teachers who had recently arrived from disparate corners of the globe. “They’d invite everyone out to share their culture,” said Assefa.
At the potluck, people who had never talked to each other showed up bearing sheets of baklava, pots of tikka masala and baskets of injera. Shy kids, many of whom spoke little English, were suddenly met with open arms by curious locals who couldn’t help but be swept up by the smell of cloves, berbere and turmeric found drifting throughout the town. “These people who don’t know me and don’t think I’m cool so far, suddenly think my food and culture are cool and interesting,” said Assefa. “Consciously or unconsciously, the first time I had the idea for this festival was there.”
Assefa says the decision to bring the Denver International Festival back in 2026 was no accident. “It was made for this time,” he said, adding that in a world of sharp divisions, forging connections with people you find unfamiliar is more important than ever. “I just wanna create that moment where people can come together and appreciate each other,” he said. “There’s something to appreciate about everybody.”
The Denver International Festival takes place on October 3 from 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. at 2736 Welton Street. The event is free.
Tickets to the Sip and Savor Tasting Hub, with curated wine, beer and spirit samples, are available here.
Photos are from the 2022 event at Civic Center Park. Courtesy of Joe Rogers.
