Afro Roots Fest Returns to Islamorada With Free World Music, Workshops

Afro Roots Fest drew Caribbean and West African music to the Morada Way Arts & Cultural District and Florida Keys Brewing Co. in Islamorada on Saturday, April 4, filling the afternoon with free programming that stretched from noon through a lineup of international acts, hands-on workshops, and vendors serving all ages.

Community Arts and Culture presented the festival, with Grammy-nominated musician and producer Jose Elias leading its programming. Elias also performed as part of the Everglades Songbook Suite, one of four featured acts that gave the day its distinctly Caribbean and West African character.

Cortadito brought the sound of Cuban son to the Keys stage, a style rooted in the Cuban countryside that predates salsa and gave rise to much of modern Latin music. The group draws frequent comparisons to the Buena Vista Social Club. Sanba Zao represented Haiti, while Famato, from Guinea in West Africa, anchored the African diasporic thread running through the festival's curation. The Everglades Songbook Suite, with Elias, rounded out the four-act bill with an American lens on the same musical lineage.

Beyond the stage, the festival offered percussion and instrument-making workshops for attendees who wanted more than a concert experience. Those sessions carried a ticket price, a structure that kept the main event free for families while generating revenue to support specialized programming and the artists behind it.

Elias, who has spent years introducing Charleston and South Florida audiences to global music, designed this year's programming with a deliberate Caribbean and West African flavor, bringing traditions rarely centered in Keys cultural programming into direct contact with local and visiting audiences. For Islamorada, a community shaped by Caribbean migration routes and maritime history, that framing carried weight beyond the playlist.

Local vendors and artists also filled the Morada Way district, extending the festival's reach into the broader creative economy that surrounds one of the Upper Keys' most active cultural corridors.