Kumbaya Festival

The Kumbaya Festival was an annual Canadian music and arts festival in the 1990s. It was organized by Molly Johnson as a benefit for Canadian charities and groups doing work around HIV and AIDS.

The festival was broadcast live on MuchMusic each year, with the broadcast including a toll-free number which home viewers could call to make additional donations. Compilation CDs of performances from the festival were also subsequently released to raise additional funds. The festival raised over $1 million during its years of activity.

Each annual festival consisted primarily of musical performers, although each also featured numerous writers reading literary pieces, as well as actors, media personalities, HIV/AIDS activists and other Canadian public figures speaking on the importance of the HIV/AIDS issue.

Although the Kumbaya Foundation, the organization which staged the festival, is still active in Canadian and international HIV/AIDS fundraising as of 2014, the festival itself has not been staged since 1996. Johnson has, however, expressed an interest in reviving the festival.