Jay Z to Hold Made in America Festival in L.A. and Philadelphia
Jay Z and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti confirmed that this year’s Budweiser Made in America festival will take place in Los Angeles as well as its traditional home of Philadelphia.
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The event, now in its third year, will be the first American festival “to run simultaneously on both coasts,” according to a press release, taking place in Los Angeles’ Grand Park on August 30th and 31st. Organizers announced that both events will benefit the United Way in each city’s region.
The announcement came at a press conference in L.A. Wednesday and is envisioned as a way to help revitalize the city’s downtown area. “Los Angeles is the perfect west-coast home for Made in America,” Garcetti said. Jay Z noted that the expansion continued his dream of “putting together a music festival that blurred those lines of genres, that all walks of life and all people can come [to].”
The decision to bring Made in America to L.A. wasn’t unanimously popular, though: José Huizar, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, raised concerns about street closures, traffic problems and a lack of community outreach in the process so far, according to LA Weekly. Huizar threatened to withhold permits for the event until he has seen report on “any permits, actions, public safety concerns, and any necessary cost implications” of the festival.
The event was founded and curated by Jay Z in 2012, and was also the subject of a documentary directed by Ron Howard. Last year’s edition featured Beyoncé, Nine Inch Nails, Deadmau5 and Phoenix as headliners and was praised for its eclectic lineup and limited amount of stages. Billboard reports the two-day festival saw projected ticket sales skyrocket to nearly 120,000 in 2013, a fifty percent increase compared to its inaugural year. There has been no announcement about who will play on this year’s lineup, but presale tickets were made available on Monday for Philadelphia.