Red Hot Blues ‘n BBQ Mission Statement

Why is Red Hot Blues ‘n BBQ the greatest blues event you’ll attend all year? Because Red Hot is about community. Red Hot is about sleeping in, sitting outside with old and new friends, drinking up sunshine, and eating delicious food. Red Hot is about dancing your heart out just for the love of the dance and the music, fueling up with delicious home-cooked afternoon and midnight meals, and then dancing even more. Red Hot is a celebration of blues music and all the feelings it inspires. Red Hot is about focusing attention on the roots of what we believe the blues is about: building communities.

Red Hot is about acknowledging the history of blues music. Blues was created by black artists. It is a genre built from the hardship and struggle that these communities faced, and blues music and dance was a means of black communities coming together in the face of oppression. At Red Hot, we want to honor and respect the roots of the music we all love to dance to. We feel it’s imperative to hire bands and DJs who share this same passion for the history of the music, and we prioritize hiring black artists to play for our dances.

Red Hot is about local communities and supporting people of color. We strive to support DC’s vibrant food and music scene when we plan our event. We always make our best effort to hire local blues bands, source food from local establishments, and hold our afternoon barbeques and evening dances at community-oriented spaces. In all of these efforts, we prioritize working with businesses run by people of color whenever it’s possible. We believe that a successful event not only caters to the attendees, but also helps support the local establishments that enable us to run the event in the first place and gives back to the community. We also try to lighten our load on the planet by composting/recycling almost all the waste from the event.

Finally, Red Hot is about YOU: the dancers, friends, neighbors, casual acquaintances, and future besties that make up the event. We all started blues dancing because we love the music and the history of the dance, but we kept coming back because we found joy and comfort in dancing with each other. We want to celebrate that feeling the best way we know how – through food. The only competitions will involve barbeque and desserts lovingly prepared by your fellow dancers (a scenario where everyone wins), and the only thing you’ll be throwing down is more barbeque sauce on your plate. The late nights feature full meals of hot food, also cooked by your fellow dancers.

So we invite you to join us for Red Hot Blues ‘n BBQ this Memorial Day weekend. We invite you to pull up a blanket on the grass and invite a dancer you don’t know to sit with you. Ask someone to dance who you might not know. Strengthen your friendships and make new ones as you bask in the warm weather and soak up the energy to dance the night away. We ask you to come break bread with us, as we join together as a community to celebrate the blues.