Black- and Queer-Founded WerQfest Returns to St. Louis for Seventh Year, Unofficially Extending Pride Month: ‘Our Queer Ancestors’ Wildest Dream!’
Categoria: Musica
The Midwest music festival will feature performances by JT, Infinite Coles and Onya Nurve.
Por Billboard | 10/07/2026
If the July 3 release of Confessions II didn’t make it clear enough, Pride Month isn’t over yet! And the place to be this weekend is St. Louis, Mo. Related With ‘Sweetface Killah,’ Infinite Coles Steps Out of Father Ghostface’s Shadow & Into a Kaleidoscope of Queer Light: ‘I Was the Underdog, and I Was Sick of It’ JT’s ‘City Cinderella’ Story: The Fast-Rising Rap Star Talks Debut Mixtape, Production Prowess & Upcoming Tour ‘Urgency and Realness’: Inside the Human Rights Campaign’s Beyoncé-Inspired ‘Renaissance’ Syllabus On Saturday (July 11), WerQfest returns to The Atomic Pavilion by Jamo for its seventh year, headlined by RuPaul’s Drag Race season 17 winner Onya Nurve and ascendant genre-fusing rapper Infinite Coles. Platinum-selling “Girls Gone Wild” rapper JT will also bring her burgeoning Club Cheetah era to the festival with a special guest appearance. Tickets are available at the festival’s official website . “When I think about WerQfest, it’s not even just my wildest dream, but also our queer ancestors’ wildest dream,” says co-founder and CEO Tre’von Griffith. “They never had a space like this; they fought for us to have this space.” Griffith co-founded WerQfest — alongside his husband, and the festival’s creative producer, Shelton Boyd-Griffith — in 2020 as an intimate Twitch stream, with the festival steadily growing year-over-year from virtual performances and socially distanced sets to a multi-stage, in-person affair. Past performers have included Grammy-nominated R&B singer and Broadway star Avery Wilson, ballroom icon Kevin Aviance, RuPaul’s Drag Race season 12 winner Jaida Essence Hall, and acclaimed alternative-R&B artist serpentwithfeet. Notably, WerQfest was also the national festival headlining debut for Durand Bernarr , who picked up his first Grammy earlier this year for best progressive R&B album. “That was a turning point I think the whole community felt,” notes Griffith. “Every year since, we’ve actually been trying to top that year.” Though its evolution has been somewhat unexpected, the upscaling of WerQfest has come naturally to the boundary-pushing couple. A former fashion editor, Boyd-Griffith frequently attends music festivals, while Griffith earned his master’s degree in global entertainment and music business from Berklee College of Music. Those backgrounds allowed the duo to navigate the cutthroat booking world as the co-heads of a niche micro-festival — while remaining steadfast in their commitment to serving and uplifting their hometown. “This is our love letter to our hometown,” says Griffith. “Right now, almost 80% of the lineup is local, and we’re using the nationally recognized talent to help amplify them. A lot of these artists are ready for a stage; they just haven’t been given the opportunity. We want to build a pipeline for artists to make this a viable career, which is something I dream that a lot of artists get a