33rd Annual Concert of Colors

The Concert of Colors is Metro Detroit’s free annual diversity-themed music festival. Global music at its finest at this colorful, festive, upbeat coveted summer event. Housed in Culture Source a coalition of 152 arts organizations in Southeast Michigan, the Concert of Colors has become the Midwest’s biggest diversity and arts festival.

The goal of the week-long festival is to unite metro Detroit’s diverse communities and ethnic groups through music and dance from around the world – and create dialogue where participants embrace freedom of expression.

Over its rich 33-year history, the festival has blossomed into a celebrated, beloved highlight of metro Detroit’s summer festival season- one of the few remaining large scale, free-admission music festivals in the area.

The Concert of Colors was established by Ismael Ahmed (host of This Island Earth) – the former head of the human services organization ACCESS – and New Detroit in 1993 as a one-day event at Chene Park on Detroit’s riverfront. The inaugural event drew a modest crowd to Chene Park, but by 1999, some 10,000 music lovers were coming out each year. The festival expanded to three days in 2001, when it was part of the official festivities for Detroit’s 300th birthday, drawing an audience of 100,000. In 2019, the concert expanded to nine days.