Afrochella to rebrand as AfroFuture in 2023 after winning lawsuit; organizers berate partner for printing fake tickets!
Co-founder of Afrochella, soon to be Afro-Future, Mr. Ken Agyapong Jnr has in an interview, addressed various issues that surrounded this year’s edition of the annual event.
Abdul Abdullah, also a co-founder of Afrochella had made the announcement of the name change at the end of the two-day festival in December, 2022 at the El-wak sports stadium.
‘‘This is the last Afrochella’’, he said.
Speaking in an interview on Hitz Fm Daybreak Hitz, Mr. Ken Jnr further addressed the reasons for the name change.
‘‘In the beginning of last year 2022 in February when we decided that, the theme for this year will be Afrofuturism that is when we actually came up with the idea of changing the name because in the long run we were going to change the name anyway so I guess everything fell in place with what was going on and then we changed the name during the festival before, so even if you look on our social media,” he explained.
He also cleared speculations about the event not returning because of the lawsuit they faced from Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and their organizers, Golden Voice for copyright infringement.
“The name has been there for so long so everybody thinks because we are getting a suit that is why we changed the name but if it was because of that, the handles and everything we already have it, so if you look on our social media page all the handles have been switched to Afro future’’, he stated.
In October 2022, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and its organizer, Golden Voice sued Ghana’s Afrochella for alleged trademark infringement.
In the lawsuit filed in a California federal court on Wednesday (October 5), Coachella and Goldenvoice claim that Afrochella is “intentionally trading on the goodwill of [Coachella and Goldenvoice’s] well-known COACHELLA and CHELLA festivals and trademarks by actively promoting music events in the United States and in Ghana using the confusingly similar mark ‘AFROCHELLA’ and by fraudulently attempting to register Plaintiffs’ actual trademarks as their own.”
The co-founder of Afrochella, Ken Agyapong Jnr, has revealed that his outfit won the copyright infringement lawsuit brought against them by Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and its organizer, Goldenvoice.
Mr Agyapong fell short of going into the details of the case but said his company “is good.”
“We won the case,” he said on Daybreak Hitz on Hitz FM.
Despite the suit, Afrochella 2022 was scheduled for December 28 and 29 at El Wak Stadium in Accra, Ghana. Artists on the bill included headliners Burna Boy and Stonebwoy, as well as Ayra Starr, Fireboy DML, Black Sherif, and more.
Furthermore, the co-founder of Afrochella, Ken Agyapong Jnr, has disclosed that the Ghanaian company contracted to print tickets for the 2022 Afrochella concert secretly printed fake ones.
He explained that despite their blue, purple and yellow original tickets, there were other orange tickets in the public which he said were fake.
Although he refused to reveal the name of the Ghanaian who was contracted to print the tickets, he expressed certainty that the company was responsible for the fake tickets for last year’s concert.
Speaking on Daybreak Hitz on Hitz FM, Tuesday, he said some people purchased tickets, but they could not be admitted to the concert because their tickets were not genuine.
“Our tickets were in three different kinds, blue, purple and yellow but all of a sudden there was an orange one.
“So people were complaining online that they didn’t get in They didn’t get in because their tickets were fake.”
“And it’s so sad to say this but the reason why there was a fake ticket was that we used a Ghanaian to print it and he also did some,” he added.
The Co-founder also explained that he knows the fake tickets were printed by their Ghanaian contractor because they have never had any incidence of fake tickets as they have been printing from outside Ghana.
“…..because usually, we print the tickets outside, but we said let’s do a hundred percent Ghanaian, and because we gave the job to a Ghanaian, he printed his own ticket to sell,” he said.
Meanwhile, he stated that last year’s Afrochella will not be the last as his Co-founder Abdul Abdullah said on the last day of the programme at the El-Wak stadium in Accra.
He explained that the event will return as ‘AfroFuture’ in 2023.
Last year’s Afrochella took place at El Wak Stadium in Accra on December 28 and 29. The two-day music festival featured Kidi, Medikal, Ayra Starr, DJ Juls, and DJ Loft.
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